QSAR and Docking Studies of Thiazolidine-4-carboxylic Acid Derivatives as Neuraminidase Inhibitors

In order to understand the chemical-biological interactions governing their activities toward neuraminidase(NA), QSAR models of 28 thiazolidine-4-carboxylic acid derivatives with inhibitory influenza A virus were developed. Here a quantitative structure activity relationship(QSAR) model was built by three-dimensional holographic atomic vector field(3 D-HoVAIF) and multiple linear regression(MLR). The estimation stability and prediction ability of the model were strictly analyzed by both internal and external validations. The correlation coefficient(R2) of established MLR model was 0.984, and the cross-validated correlation coefficient(Q2) of MLR model was 0.947. Furthermore, the cross-validated correlation coefficient for the test set(Qext2) was 0.967. The binding mode pattern of the compounds to the binding site of integrase enzyme was confirmed by docking studies. The results of present study indicated that this model can aid in designing more potent neuraminidase inhibitors.     

A Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationship Study of Calpeptin (Calpain Inhibitor) as an Anticancer Agent

Calpeptin analogs show anticancer properties with inhibition of calpain. In this work, we applied a quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) model on 34 calpeptin derivatives to select the most appropriate compound. QSAR was employed to generate the models and predict the more significant compounds through a series of calpeptin derivatives. The HyperChem, Gaussian 09, and Dragon software programs were used for geometry optimization of the molecules. The 2D and 3D molecular structures were drawn by ChemDraw (Ultra 16.0) and Chem3D (Pro16.0) software. The Unscrambler program was used for the analysis of data. Multiple linear regression (MLR‐MLR), partial least‐squares (MLR‐PLS1), principal component regression (MLR‐PCR), a genetic algorithm‐artificial neural networks (GA‐ANN), and a novel similarity analysis‐artificial neural network (SA‐ANN) method were used to create QSAR models. Among the three MLR models, MLR‐MLR provided better statistical parameters. The R² and RMSE of the prediction were estimated as 0.8248 and 0.26, respectively. Nevertheless, the constructed model using GA‐ANN revealed the best statistical parameters among the studied methods (R² test = 0.9643, RMSE test = 0.0155, R² train = 0.9644, RMSE train = 0.0139). The GA‐ANN model is found to be the most favorable method among the statistical methods and can be employed for designing new calpeptin analogs as potent calpain inhibitors in cancer treatment.     

QSAR modeling and design of cationic antimicrobial peptides based on structural properties of amino acids

Drug resistance to existing antibiotics poses alarming threats to global public health, which inspires heightened interests in searching for new antibiotics, including antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). Accurate prediction of antibacterial activities of AMPs may expedite novel AMP design and reduce the costs and efforts involved in laboratory screening. In the present study, a novel quantitative prediction method of AMP was established by quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) modeling based on the physicochemical properties of amino acids. The indices of these physicochemical properties were used to define AMP. The structural variables were optimized by stepwise regression (STR). Three series of AMPs from the QSAR model were constructed by multiple linear regressions (MLR). These QSAR models showed good performance in reliability and predictability. The normalized regression coefficients of the QSAR model and the contribution of amino acids at each position of AMP may determine the suitableness of a particular residue at any given position. QSAR models constructed by STR-MLR should prove to be useful tools in peptide design with respect to the calculation, explanation, good and reliable performance, and definition of physiochemical properties.     

Robust cross-validation of linear regression QSAR models

A quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) model is typically developed to predict the biochemical activity of untested compounds from the compounds' molecular structures. "The gold standard" of model validation is the blindfold prediction when the model's predictive power is assessed from how well the model predicts the activity values of compounds that were not considered in any way during the model development/calibration. However, during the development of a QSAR model, it is necessary to obtain some indication of the model's predictive power. This is often done by some form of cross-validation (CV). In this study, the concepts of the predictive power and fitting ability of a multiple linear regression (MLR) QSAR model were examined in the CV context allowing for the presence of outliers. Commonly used predictive power and fitting ability statistics were assessed via Monte Carlo cross-validation when applied to percent human intestinal absorption, blood-brain partition coefficient, and toxicity values of saxitoxin QSAR data sets, as well as three known benchmark data sets with known outlier contamination. It was found that (1) a robust version of MLR should always be preferred over the ordinary-least-squares MLR, regardless of the degree of outlier contamination and that (2) the model's predictive power should only be assessed via robust statistics. The Matlab and java source code used in this study is freely available from the QSAR-BENCH section of www.dmitrykonovalov.org for academic use. The Web site also contains the java-based QSAR-BENCH program, which could be run online via java's Web Start technology (supporting Windows, Mac OSX, Linux/Unix) to reproduce most of the reported results or apply the reported procedures to other data sets.     

基于多元线性回归的血管紧张素转化酶抑制肽定量构效关系建模研究

利用氨基酸结构描述符SVHEHS分别对血管紧张素转化酶(Angiotensin I-converting Enzyme,ACE)竞争性抑制二肽、三肽、四肽序列表征后,建立结构与活性的多元线性回归(MLR)模型。ACE抑制二肽模型的相关系数、交叉验证相关系数、均方根误差、外部验证相关系数分别为0.851、0.781、0.327、0.792;三肽模型分别为0.805、0.717、0.339、0.817;四肽模型分别为0.792、0.553、0.393、0.630。研究表明,运用该描述符建立的ACE抑制肽MLR模型拟合、预测能力均较好,能较好解释ACE抑制肽的活性与结构间的关系。