Classification of Potential Endocrine Disrupters on the Basis of Molecular Structure Using a Nonlinear Modeling Method.

Abstract

A methodology for the classification of endocrine disruption chemicals is proposed. It is based on a data set of 106 substances extracted from the list of 553 chemicals that were inspected by the European Union Commission for the scientific evidence of their endocrine disruption activity. The substances belong to different categories defined in the EU Commission report: (i) literature evidence for certainly active as endocrine disrupters, (ii) for potentially active, (iii) for less probable active lacking evidence, and (iv) for certainty nonactive. 3D molecular coordinates were calculated using the AM1or the PM3 optimization method. From 3D coordinates an extensive set of molecular descriptors was calculated. The classification model based on the counterpropagation neural network was constructed and evaluated. This is the first time that the counterpropagation neural network is applied for the classification of compounds regarding their literature evidence for the endocrine disruption activity. The devel...