The present invention relates to identification of a compound which inhibits the enzyme NMPRTase and glioma cancer cell growth and further used for glioma therapy. Pre-B-cell colony enhancing factor 1 gene (PBEF1) encodes nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NMPRTase), which catalyzes the rate limiting step in the salvage pathway of NAD metabolism in mammalian cells. PBEF1 transcript and protein levels have been shown to be elevated in glioblastoma and a chemical inhibitor of NMPRTase has been shown to specifically inhibit cancer cells. Here a structure based drug discovery approach has been reported with an aim to develop novel inhibitors for glioblastoma therapy. Present invention relates to virtual screening using docking of ligands from a large library of 13,000 compounds against NMPRTase as the macromolecular target resulting in short listing of 34 possible ligands, of which six were tested experimentally, using the NMPRTase enzyme inhibition assay and further with the glioma cell viability assays. Of these, two compounds were found to be significantly efficacious in inhibiting the conversion of nicotinamide to NAD, and out of which one compound, 3-amino-2-benzyl-7-nitro-4-(2-quinolyl-)-1,2-dihydroisoquinolin-1-one, was found to inhibit the growth of a PBEF1 over expressing glioma derived cell line U87 also.
