Activity relationships

This is the domain of establishing Structure-Property or Structure-Activity Relationships (SPR or SAR), or even of finding such relationships in a quantitative manner (QSPR or QSAR). 

A challenging task in material science as well as in pharmaceutical research is to custom tailor a compound s properties. George S. Hammond stated that the most fundamental and lasting objective of synthesis is not production of new compounds, but production of properties (Norris Award Lecture, 1968). The molecular structure of an organic or inorganic compound determines its properties. Nevertheless, methods for the direct prediction of a compound s properties based on its molecular structure are usually not available (Figure 8-1). Therefore, the establishment of Quantitative Structure-Property Relationships (QSPRs) and Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSARs) uses an indirect approach in order to tackle this problem. In the first step, numerical descriptors encoding information about the molecular structure are calculated for a set of compounds. Secondly, statistical and artificial neural network models are used to predict the property or activity of interest based on these descriptors or a suitable subset. 

Besides the aforementioned descriptors, grid-based methods are frequently used in the field of QSAR quantitative structure-activity relationships) [50]. A molecule is placed in a box and for an orthogonal grid of points the interaction energy values between this molecule and another small molecule, such as water, are calculated. The grid map thus obtained characterizes the molecular shape, charge distribution, and hydrophobicity. 

Furthermore, QSPR models for the prediction of free-energy based properties that are based on multilinear regression analysis are often referred to as LFER models, especially, in the wide field of quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR). 

The fundamental assumption of SAR and QSAR (Structure-Activity Relationships and Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships) is that the activity of a compound is related to its structural and/or physicochemical properties. In a classic article Corwin Hansch formulated Eq. (15) as a linear frcc-cncrgy related model for the biological activity (e.g.. toxicity) of a group of congeneric chemicals [37, in which the inverse of C, the concentration effect of the toxicant, is related to a hy-drophobidty term, FI, an electronic term, a (the Hammett substituent constant). Stcric terms can be added to this equation (typically Taft s steric parameter, E,). 

The reliability of the in silico models will be improved and their scope for predictions will be broader as soon as more reliable experimental data are available. However, there is the paradox of predictivity versus diversity. The greater the chemical diversity in a data set, the more difficult is the establishment of a predictive structure-activity relationship. Otherwise, a model developed based on compounds representing only a small subspace of the chemical space has no predictivity for compounds beyond its boundaries. 

Neural networks have been proposed as an alternative way to generate quantitative structure-activity relationships [Andrea and Kalayeh 1991]. A commonly used type of neural net contains layers of units with connections between all pairs of units in adjacent layers (Figure 12.38). Each unit is in a state represented by a real value between 0 and 1. The state of a unit is determined by the states of the units in the previous layer to which it is connected and the strengths of the weights on these connections. A neural net must first be trained to perform the desired task. To do this, the network is presented with a... 

Kubinyi H 1995. The Quantitative Analysis of Structure-Activity Relationships. In Wolff M E (Editor) Burger s Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery. 5th Edition, Volume 1. New York, John Wiley Sons, pp. 497-571. 

I and C L Waller 1997. Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Three-Dimensional Quantitative icture-Activity Relationships. In Lipkowitz K B and D B Boyd (Editors) Reviews in iputational Chemistry Volume 11. New York, VCH Publishers, pp. 127-182. 

T A and H Kalayeh 1991. Applications of Neural Networks in Quantitative Structure-Activity ationships of Dihydrofolate Reductase Inhibitors, journal of Medicinal Chemistry 34 2824-2836. ik M and R C Glen 1992. Applications of Rule-induction in the Derivation of Quantitative icture-Activity Relationships. Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design 6 349-383. 

Dunn W J III, S Wold, U Edlund, S Hellberg and J Gasteiger 1984. Multivariate Structure-Activib Relationships Between Data from a Battery of Biological Tests and an Ensemble of Structur Descriptors The PLS Method. Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships 3 131-137. 

K and G M Crippen 1986. Atomic Physicochemical Parameters for Three-dimensional Struc-directed Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships. I. Partition Coefficients as a Measure ydrophobicity. Journal of Computational Chemistry 7 565-577. 

B Mohney and L B Kier 1991. The Electrotopological State An Atom Index for QSAR. ntitative Structure-Activity Relationships 10 43-51. 

A Quantitative Approach to Biochemical Structure-Activity Relationships. Accounts of nical Research 2 232-239. 

Z, ] McClarin, T Klein and R Langridge 1985. A Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship and ecular Graphics Study of Carbonic Anhydrase Inhibitors. Molecular Pharmacology 27 493-498. 

Holiday J D, S R Ranade and P Willett 1995. A Fast Algorithm For Selecting Sets Of Dissimilar Molecule From Large Chemical Databases. Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships 14 501-506. 

Hudson B D, R M Hyde, E Rahr, J Wood and J Osman 1996. Parameter Based Methods for Compoun Selection from Chemical Databases. Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships 15 285-289. 

Poso A, R Juvonen and J Gynther 1995. Comparative Molecular Field Analysis of Compounds wii CYP2A5 Binding Affinity. Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships 14 507-511. 

Rogers D and A J Hopfinger 1994. Application of Genetic Function Approximation to Quantitatir Structure-Activity Relationships and Quantitative Structure-Property Relationships. Journal Chemical Information and Computer Science 34 854-866. 

Completely ah initio predictions can be more accurate than any experimental result currently available. This is only true of properties that depend on the behavior of isolated molecules. Colligative properties, which are due to the interaction between molecules, can be computed more reliably with methods based on thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, structure-activity relationships, or completely empirical group additivity methods. 

When the property being described is a physical property, such as the boiling point, this is referred to as a quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR). When the property being described is a type of biological activity, such as drug activity, this is referred to as a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR). Our discussion will first address QSPR. All the points covered in the QSPR section are also applicable to QSAR, which is discussed next. 

Practical Applications of Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) in Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology W. Karcher, J. Devillers, Eds., Kluwer, Dordrecht (1990). 

An area of great interest in the polymer chemistry field is structure-activity relationships. In the simplest form, these can be qualitative descriptions, such as the observation that branched polymers are more biodegradable than straight-chain polymers. Computational simulations are more often directed toward the quantitative prediction of properties, such as the tensile strength of the bulk material. 

PW91 (Perdew, Wang 1991) a gradient corrected DFT method QCI (quadratic conhguration interaction) a correlated ah initio method QMC (quantum Monte Carlo) an explicitly correlated ah initio method QM/MM a technique in which orbital-based calculations and molecular mechanics calculations are combined into one calculation QSAR (quantitative structure-activity relationship) a technique for computing chemical properties, particularly as applied to biological activity QSPR (quantitative structure-property relationship) a technique for computing chemical properties... 

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