Abstract

Inhibition of farnesyltransferase (FT) enzyme by a set of 78 thiol and non-thiol peptidomimetic inhibitors was successfully modeled by a genetic neural network (GNN) approach, using radial distribution function descriptors. A linear model was unable to successfully fit the whole data set; however, the optimum Bayesian regularized neural network model described about 87% inhibitory activity variance with a relevant predictive power measured by q2 values of leave-one-out and leave-group-out cross-validations of about 0.7. According to their activity levels, thiol and non-thiol inhibitors were well-distributed in a topological map, built with the inputs of the optimum non-linear predictor. Furthermore, descriptors in the GNN model suggested the occurrence of a strong dependence of FT inhibition on the molecular shape and size rather than on electronegativity or polarizability characteristics of the studied compounds. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.