title: Antileishmanial chalcones: statistical design, synthesis, and three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship analysis.
abstract: A large number of substituted chalcones have been synthesized and tested for antileishmanial and lymphocyte-suppressing activities. A subset of the chalcones was designed by using statistical methods. 3D-QSAR analyses using 67 (antileishmanial activity) and 63 (lymphocyte-suppressing activity) of the compounds for the training sets and 9 compounds as an external validation set were performed by using the GRID/GOLPE methodology. The Smart Region Definition procedure with subsequent region selection as implemented in GOLPE reduced the number of variables to approximately 1300 yielding 3D-QSAR models of high quality (lymphocyte-suppressing model, R2 = 0. 90, Q2 = 0.80; antileishmanial model, R2 = 0.73, Q2 = 0.63). The coefficient plots indicate that steric interactions between the chalcones and the target are of major importance for the potencies of the compounds. A comparison of the coefficient plots for the antileishmanial effect and the lymphocyte-suppressing activity discloses significant differences which should make it possible to design chalcones having a high antileishmanial activity without suppressing the proliferation of lymphocytes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Royal Danish School of Pharmacy, Universitetsparken 2, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: S F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Nielsen
authors.forename: S B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Christensen
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cruciani
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kharazmi
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Liljefors
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002455:Cell Division / Q000187:drug effects; D002599:Chalcone / Q000031:analogs & derivatives* / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology; D006801:Humans; D066298:In Vitro Techniques; D020128:Inhibitory Concentration 50; D007893:Leishmania donovani / Q000187:drug effects; D008214:Lymphocytes / Q000166:cytology / Q000187:drug effects; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D014344:Trypanocidal Agents / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology
chemical_list: D014344:Trypanocidal Agents; D002599:Chalcone