Chemometric methods in antimalarial drug design from 1,2,4,5-tetraoxanes analogues

ABSTRACT

A set of 23 steroidal 1,2,4,5-tetraoxane analogues were studied using quantum-chemical method (B3LYP/6-31 G*) and multivariate analyses (PCA, HCA, KNN and SIMCA) in order to calculate the properties and correlate them with antimalarial activity (log RA) against Plasmodium falciparum clone D-6 from Sierra Leone. PCA results indicated 99.94% of the total variance and it was possible to divide the compounds into two classes: less and more active. Descriptors responsible for separating were: highest occupied molecular orbital energy (HOMO), bond length (O1-O2), Mulliken electronegativity (χ) and Bond information content (BIC0). We use HCA, KNN and SIMCA to explain relationships between molecular properties and biological activity of a training set and to predict antimalarial activity (log RA) of 13 compounds (#24-36) with unknown biological activity. We apply molecular docking simulations to identify intermolecular interactions with a selected biological target. The results obtained in multivariate analysis aided in the understanding of the activity of the new compound's design (#24-36). Thus, through chemometric analyses and docking molecular study, we propose theoretical synthetic routes for the most promising compounds 28, 30, 32 and 36 that can proceed to synthesis steps and in vitro and in vivo assays.

KEYWORDS:

• Antimalarial activity
• B3LYP/6-31G*
• multivariate analysis
• SAR
• molecular docking

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support provided by the Federal University of Pará (UFPA-Brazil) and Institute of Exact and Natural Sciences for the use of Gaussian 16 software. Laboratory of Modeling and Computational Chemistry of Federal University of Amapá (UNIFAP-Brazil), Computational Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Chemistry (USP-Ribeirão Preto-Brazil) and Laboratory of Molecular Modeling (UEFS-Feira de Santana-Brazil) by the computational support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1062936X.2020.1803961.