How accurately can we predict the melting points of drug-like compounds?

This article contributes a highly accurate model for predicting the melting points (MPs) of medicinal chemistry compounds. The model was developed using the largest published data set, comprising more than 47k compounds. The distributions of MPs in drug-like and drug lead sets showed that >90% of molecules melt within [50,250]°C. The final model calculated an RMSE of less than 33 °C for molecules from this temperature interval, which is the most important for medicinal chemistry users. This performance was achieved using a consensus model that performed calculations to a significantly higher accuracy than the individual models. We found that compounds with reactive and unstable groups were overrepresented among outlying compounds. These compounds could decompose during storage or measurement, thus introducing experimental errors. While filtering the data by removing outliers generally increased the accuracy of individual models, it did not significantly affect the results of the consensus models. Three analyzed distance to models did not allow us to flag molecules, which had MP values fell outside the applicability domain of the model. We believe that this negative result and the public availability of data from this article will encourage future studies to develop better approaches to define the applicability domain of models. The final model, MP data, and identified reactive groups are available online at http://ochem.eu/article/55638.

The QSPR-THESAURUS: the online platform of the CADASTER project.

The aim of the CADASTER project (CAse Studies on the Development and Application of in Silico Techniques for Environmental Hazard and Risk Assessment) was to exemplify REACH-related hazard assessments for four classes of chemical compound, namely, polybrominated diphenylethers, per and polyfluorinated compounds, (benzo)triazoles, and musks and fragrances. The QSPR-THESAURUS website (http: / /qspr-thesaurus.eu) was established as the project's online platform to upload, store, apply, and also create, models within the project. We overview the main features of the website, such as model upload, experimental design and hazard assessment to support risk assessment, and integration with other web tools, all of which are essential parts of the QSPR-THESAURUS.

Predictive QSAR modeling of phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitors.

A series of diverse organic compounds, phosphodiesterase type 4 (PDE-4) inhibitors, have been modeled using a QSAR-based approach. 48 QSAR models were compared by following the same procedure with different combinations of descriptors and machine learning methods. QSAR methodologies used random forests and associative neural networks. The predictive ability of the models was tested through leave-one-out cross-validation, giving a Q² = 0.66-0.78 for regression models and total accuracies Ac=0.85-0.91 for classification models. Predictions for the external evaluation sets obtained accuracies in the range of 0.82-0.88 (for active/inactive classifications) and Q² = 0.62-0.76 for regressions. The method showed itself to be a potential tool for estimation of IC50 of new drug-like candidates at early stages of drug development.