title: Combined application of cheminformatics- and physical force field-based scoring functions improves binding affinity prediction for CSAR data sets.
abstract: The curated CSAR-NRC benchmark sets provide valuable opportunity for testing or comparing the performance of both existing and novel scoring functions. We apply two different scoring functions, both independently and in combination, to predict the binding affinity of ligands in the CSAR-NRC data sets. One reported here for the first time employs multiple chemical-geometrical descriptors of the protein-ligand interface to develop Quantitative Structure Binding Affinity Relationships (QSBAR) models. These models are then used to predict binding affinity of ligands in the external data set. Second is a physical force field-based scoring function, MedusaScore. We show that both individual scoring functions achieve statistically significant prediction accuracies with the squared correlation coefficient (R(2)) between the actual and predicted binding affinity of 0.44/0.53 (Set1/Set2) with QSBAR models and 0.34/0.47 (Set1/Set2) with MedusaScore. Importantly, we find that the combination of QSBAR models and MedusaScore into consensus scoring function affords higher prediction accuracy than any of the contributing methods achieving R(2) values of 0.45/0.58 (Set1/Set2). Furthermore, we identify several chemical features and noncovalent interactions that may be responsible for the inaccurate prediction of binding affinity for several ligands by the scoring functions employed in this study.
authors.affiliation: Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7360, United States.
authors.forename: Jui-Hua
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Hsieh
authors.forename: Shuangye
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.forename: Shubin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sedykh
authors.forename: Nikolay V
authors.initials: NV
authors.lastname: Dokholyan
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tropsha
mesh_terms: D001665:Binding Sites; D008024:Ligands; D008956:Models, Chemical; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D008024:Ligands