Quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies were performed on a series of 5-arylidene-2thioxoimidazolidin-4-ones derivatives as the inhibitors of perforin and to gain insights about the structural determinants for designing new drug molecules. The heuristic method could explore the descriptors responsible for bioactivity and gain a best linear model with R2 .82. Gene expression programming method generated a novel nonlinear function model with R2 .92 for training set and R2 .85 for test set. The predicted IC50 by QSAR, molecular docking analysis, and property explorer applet show that 42a acts as a well-pleasing potent inhibitor for perforin. This study may lay a reliable theoretical foundation for the development of designing perforin inhibitor structures.
Keywords: gene expression programming; heuristic method; molecular docking; perforin inhibitor; quantitative structure-activity relationship.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons A/S.