Photoprotective Properties of Natural Pulvinic Acid Derivatives toward Ultraviolet-Induced Damages

Abstract

Pulvinic acid derivatives are considered as worthy to be evaluated as skin protection factor toward ultraviolet-induced damages because of their colors and locations in lichens. Due to the lack of literature about photo-protective features of pulvinic acid derivatives, their cosmetic potentials for skin protection were evaluated in silico, for the first time. Computational chemistry, biology and pharmacology platforms such as Gaussian, GAMESS, PASS, PaDEL-DDPredictor and VEGA QSAR platforms were employed to determine the activities of pulvinic acid derivatives. Pulvinic acid derivatives were divided into three groups as the most promising, promising and unpromising compounds according to the calculated p-values. Although leprapinic acid, demethylleprapinic acid, pinastric acid, leprapinic acid methyl ether, 4-hydroxyvulpinic acid and vulpinic acid were determined as the most promising compounds, epanorin and rhizocarpic acid were identified as promising compounds. The proposed model seems to be reliable because the calculated p-value for vulpinic acid was found to be compatible with previously obtained experimental results. The pulvinic acid derivatives that were identified as the most promising ones should be therefore further studied by in vitro and in vivo multiple experiments.