Title:QSAR Analysis and Molecular Docking Studies of Aryl Sulfonamide Derivatives as Mcl-1 Inhibitors and the Influence of Structure and Chirality on the Inhibitory Activity
Volume: 21
Issue: 16
Author(s): Jia Chen, Yang Ma, Jian-Wei Zou, Sheng Hu, Meilan Huang and Guixiang Hu*
Affiliation:
- School of Biological and Chemical Engineering, NingboTech University, Ningbo, China
Keywords:
Myeloid cell leukemia-1, aryl sulfonamide, quantitative structure-activity relationship, Monte Carlo crossvalidation, molecular docking, chirality.
Abstract:
Background: Mcl-1 is a kind of antiapoptotic protein and its overexpression is closely
related to the occurrence of cancer. Aryl sulfonamide derivatives are expected to become new anticancer
agents due to their high inhibitory activity on the Mcl-1 protein.
Objective: The study aimed to establish the QSAR model with good prediction ability and elaborate
the influence of structure and chirality on the inhibitory activity.
Methods: Multiple QSAR models were built with different types of descriptors and modeling methods.
The molecular docking was performed on compounds 45, 25, 26, 24R, and 24S. The MCCV
method was used to perform rigorous validations with up to 216
= 65,536 samplings for MLR, SVM,
LSSVM, RF, and GP methods based on the model of 2D and 3D combined descriptors.
Results: The models based on 2D and 3D combined descriptors demonstrated non-linear LSSVM, RF, and GP methods based on the model of 2D and 3D combined descriptors.
Results: The models based on 2D and 3D combined descriptors demonstrated non-linear LSSVM
and GP methods to provide better results (R2>0.94, R2CV > 0.86). The predictive performances of
MCCV tests have been basically coincident with the single test set’s results. The hydrogen bond
acceptor at the appropriate position of the substituent on the chiral center could form the hydrogen
bond interaction with residue ASN260, resulting in stronger interaction and higher inhibitory activity.
The interaction differences between R and S configurations could be mainly attributed to two
residues, HIS224 and ASN260. Furthermore, the steric effect of the substituent on chiral carbon atoms
was crucial. A high steric effect could prevent the binding of the substituent and protein, resulting
in low inhibitory activity.
Conclusion: The study may provide theoretical guidance on the design and synthesis of novel aryl
sulfonamide derivatives with high inhibitory activity.