QSAR by molecular topology of 2,4-dihydroxythiobenzanilides—A virtual screening approach to optimize the antifungal activity

Abstract

Molecular topology has been success fully used to get QSAR models able to predict the antifungal activity of 2,4-dihydroxythiobenzilanilides. Minimal inhibition concentrations (MIC) from different <i>Epidermophyton floccosum, Micro</i><i>sporum </i><i>gypseum </i>and <i>Trichophyton interdigitale </i>strains arc used as key properties to evaluate. The results obtained establish clearly the high efficiency of molecular topology in the prediction of such MIC values ( errors about ±1 dilution or lower in 97% of the data).Cross-validation by leave-one-out tests have been also realized to study the stability of the connectivity functions selected.<br> Some structure-activity relations have been studied as well. From them, it stands out the presence, on all the selected equations, of the S^T(-OH) descriptor which takes into account the lipophyllic character of compounds what, accordingly, should play a important role over the antifungal activity.<br> A virtual screening to optimize such activity was also performed leading to clear improvement, particularly on the prediction of activity for the <i>Micro</i><i>sporum </i><i>gypseum </i>strain.