Study on the Physical and Biochemical Properties of Natural Antioxidants Used in the Treatment of Skin Cancer

Oxidative stress from  Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) leads to skin inflammation and hampers the skin's ability to heal, potentially causing skin cancer. The DNA damage caused by ROS can result in mutations that increase cancer risk. 

This study examines how oxidative stress, driven by an overproduction of ROS, contributes to the development of skin diseases, particularly those aggravated by UV radiation. Natural antioxidants can neutralize ROS and interrupt the harmful processes that cause skin damage. To address these issues, the research explores using natural antioxidants, such as phenolic acids and flavonoids, as chemopreventive agents to slow or prevent the damage.

Through computational methods, this paper assessed the stability and reactivity of the molecules by examining their optimization energies (which indicate stability), dipole moments (which reflect reactivity), and electrostatic potential maps(EPM). Molecular editing programs and tools were used to analyze a variety of molecules for biomedical purposes. The programs are open-source and commercial molecular editing programs equipped with an auto-optimization feature, which determines the theoretical values of a particular molecule’s atomic and biochemical properties of the molecules through the orbital and Density Functional Theory (DFT). These tools allow users to build virtually any molecule and optimize its geometry according to various force field options. For this study, the Universal Force Field option was used.