DFT-based QSAR and QSPR models of several cis-platinum complexes: solvent effect

Abstract

Cytotoxic activities of cis-platinum complexes against parental and resistant ovarian cancer cell lines were investigated by quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) analysis using density functional theory (DFT) based descriptors. The calculated parameters were found to increase the predictability of each QSAR model with incorporation of solvent effects indicating its importance in studying biological activity. Given the importance of logarithmic n-octanol/water partition coefficient (log P(o/w)) in drug metabolism and cellular uptake, we modeled the log P(o/w) of 24 platinum complexes with different leaving and carrier ligands by the quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) analysis against five different concentrations of MeOH using DFT and molecular mechanics derived descriptors. The log P(o/w) values of an additional set of 20 platinum complexes were also modeled with the same descriptors. We investigated the predictability of the model by calculating log P(o/w) of four compounds in the test set and found their predicted values to be in good agreement with the experimental values. The QSPR analyses performed on 24 complexes, combining the training and test sets, also provided significant values for the statistical parameters. The solvent medium played an important role in QSPR analysis by increasing the internal predictive ability of the models.