TNBC is an aggressive form of breast cancer with no targeted treatment available. Chemotherapy drugs like docetaxel are prescribed for TNBC patients. Chemotherapy is cytotoxic and has various side effects as it cannot differentiate between normal cells and fast dividing cancer cells. Docetaxel kills most of the cancer cells, but some are resistant to docetaxel. These resistant cells survive and express cancer stem cell markers; in fact, they are responsible for the relapse of cancer. In this project, we are studying if the chemicals in natural products like ginger, turmeric, herb (ashwagandha), grapefruit, lemon peel, etc. can interact with the overexpressed proteins (responsible for their survival and growth) in these docetaxel resistant cells by making use of molecular docking, a bioinformatics modeling technique. We have found proteins (CD24, KIF11, and KIF14) that get overexpressed when TNBC cells become resistant to docetaxel by making use of Oncomine (research premium edition) and research papers. We are working with prominent chemicals in natural products and have preliminary data that make use of the online molecular docking tool Patch Dock and we are going to analyze the interactions using a molecular visualization system called Pymol. If we find possible interactions, it will be significant as this will indicate the potential of natural products to kill docetaxel-resistant TNBC stem cells. Natural products are well tolerated by the human body and they will be a great substitute for toxic chemotherapy drugs. Key Words: TNBC, CD24, KIF11, KIF14, Docetaxel, molecular docking, natural product
