Molecular Networking, Docking, and Biological Evaluation of Licarin A from Myristica fragrans as a Potential Cancer Chemopreventive Agent

Currently, clinically available cancer chemopreventive drug options are limited to mostly tamoxifen and its derivatives, such as raloxifene, and approved specifically for breast cancer. Thus, the availability of chemopreventive drug molecules for other types of malignant cancers would be desirable. In previous reports, the arils of <i>Myristica fragrans</i> (mace) have been found to exhibit cancer chemopreventive activity. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to identify a natural product from this species with potential chemopreventive activity guided by chemoinformatic sample analysis via Global Natural Products Social (GNPS) molecular networking and molecular docking. The neolignan licarin A (<b>1</b>) was identified as a potential chemopreventive constituent, and subsequently submitted to several in vitro bioassays and a zebrafish toxicity evaluation. In this work, <b>1</b> afforded superior phosphoNF-<i>κ</i>Bp65 phosphorylation activity in DU-145 prostate cancer cells compared to isoliquiritigenin (<b>2</b>), which was used as a natural product chemopreventive control. Both <b>1</b> and <b>2</b> showed a longer-lasting reduction in cellular stress in a cell oxidative stress real-time dose-response assay than the positive control using Hepa1c1c7 mouse hepatoma cells. In addition, <b>1</b> displayed similar activities to <b>2</b>, while also being less toxic to zebrafish (<i>Danio rerio</i>) than both this chalcone and the clinically used chemopreventive drug tamoxifen.