Can quercetin reduce arsenic induced toxicity in mouse BALB/c 3T3 fibroblast cells? A study involving in vitro, molecular docking, and ADME predictions

This study aimed to investigate the protective effect of quercetin against arsenic-induced oxidative damage, inflammation, and apoptosis in mouse BALB/c 3T3 fibroblast cells (NIH-3T3). Arsenic at different concentrations of 0.05 µM (low), 0.5 µM (medium), 10 µM (high) doses were used to induce toxicity, while 120 μm quercetin was used for treatment. MTT and LDH analyses were performed to determine the effect of arsenic and quercetin on cell viability, while oxidative stress markers and antioxidant enzyme activities were measured by spectrophotometric method. TNF-α and IL-1β levels were measured by the ELISA method, Autodock programs were used for molecular docking studies. In addition, computer-based analyses of quercetin and succimer molecules were performed using SwissADME web tools. TNF-α (PDB ID: 2AZ5), IL-1β (PDB ID: 1ITB), Caspase3 (PDB ID: 2XYG), Bax (PDB ID: 4S0O), SOD (PDB ID:1CBJ), GSH-Px (PDB ID: 1GP1) and Bcl-2 (PDB ID: 1G5M) crystal structures were obtained from the Protein Data Bank. Bax and Bcl-2 levels of apoptotic genes and mRNA expression levels of Caspase-3 activity were measured using the QRT-PCR technique. TUNEL staining was performed to determine DNA fragmentations, while DAPI staining was done to visualise nuclear modifications. Quercetin has been found to significantly reduce oxidative stress, inflammation, and apoptosis in cells and exert anti-apoptotic effects. Molecular docking studies revealed quercetin shows good binding affinity with molecules with SOD, GSH-Px, Bax, Bcl-2, Caspase-3, TNF-α and IL-1β structures, and has been observed to bind with Bax and Bcl-2 with molecular docking scores of -7.5 and - 7.7 kcal/mol, respectively. These findings are supported by results showing that quercetin is effective in anti-apoptotic and anti-inflammatory processes in arsenic-induced cells under in vitro conditions. In addition, when ADME values are examined, it can be considered that quercetin is a useful and effective candidate compound in reducing arsenic toxicity, considering its higher synthetic accessibility score, better pharmacokinetic properties, and good biological transition and interaction capacities compared to succimer.