QSAR Modeling Based on Conformation Ensembles Using a Multi-Instance Learning Approach.

Modern QSAR approaches have wide practical applications in drug discovery for designing potentially bioactive molecules. If such models are based on the use of 2D descriptors, important information contained in the spatial structures of molecules is lost. The major problem in constructing models using 3D descriptors is the choice of a putative bioactive conformation, which affects the predictive performance. The multi-instance (MI) learning approach considering multiple conformations in model training could be a reasonable solution to the above problem. In this study, we implemented several multi-instance algorithms, both conventional and based on deep learning, and investigated their performance. We compared the performance of MI-QSAR models with those based on the classical single-instance QSAR (SI-QSAR) approach in which each molecule is encoded by either 2D descriptors computed for the corresponding molecular graph or 3D descriptors issued for a single lowest energy conformation. The calculations were carried out on 175 data sets extracted from the ChEMBL23 database. It is demonstrated that (i) MI-QSAR outperforms SI-QSAR in numerous cases and (ii) MI algorithms can automatically identify plausible bioactive conformations.

Conjugated Quantitative Structure-Property Relationship Models: Application to Simultaneous Prediction of Tautomeric Equilibrium Constants and Acidity of Molecules.

Here, we describe a concept of conjugated models for several properties (activities) linked by a strict mathematical relationship. This relationship can be directly integrated analytically into the ridge regression (RR) algorithm or accounted for in a special case of "twin" neural networks (NN). Developed approaches were applied to the modeling of the logarithm of the prototropic tautomeric constant (logKT) which can be expressed as the difference between the acidity constants (pKa) of two related tautomers. Both conjugated and individual RR and NN models for logKT and pKa were developed. The modeling set included 639 tautomeric constants and 2371 acidity constants of organic molecules in various solvents. A descriptor vector for each reaction resulted from the concatenation of structural descriptors and some parameters for reaction conditions. For the former, atom-centered substructural fragments describing acid sites in tautomer molecules were used. The latter were automatically identified using the condensed graph of reaction approach. Conjugated models performed similarly to the best individual models for logKT and pKa. At the same time, the physically grounded relationship between logKT and pKa was respected only for conjugated but not individual models.