Abstract.
A quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) study on 48 peptidic
HIV-1 protease inhibitors was performed. Fourteen a priori molecular descriptors
were used to build QSAR models. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), principal
component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares regression (PLS) were
employed. PLS models with 32/16 (model I) and 48/0 (model II) molecules
in the training/external validation set were constructed. The a priori
molecular descriptors were related to two energetic variables using PLS.
HCA and PCA on data from model II classified the inhibitors as slightly,
moderately and highly active; three principal components, the chemical
nature of which has been highlighted, are enough to describe the enzyme-inhibitor
binding. Model I (r2=0.91, q2=0.84)
is comparable to literature models obtained by various QSAR softwares,
which justified the use of a priori descriptors.
Keywords.
A priori molecular descriptors; QSAR; HIV-1 protease inhibitors; Chemometrics
Keywords Plus.