Identification of structure–activity relationships for adverse effects of pharmaceuticals in humans: Part C: Use of QSAR and an expert system for the estimation of the mechanism of action of drug-induced hepatobiliary and urinary tract toxicities

This report describes an in silico methodology to predict off-target pharmacologic activities and plausible mechanisms of action (MOAs) associated with serious and unexpected hepatobiliary and urinary tract adverse effects in human patients. The investigation used a database of 8,316,673 adverse event (AE) reports observed after drugs had been marketed and AEs noted in the published literature that were linked to 2124 chemical structures and 1851 approved clinical indications. The Integrity™ database of drug patent and literature studies was used to find pharmacologic targets and proposed clinical indications. BioEpisteme™ QSAR software was used to predict possible molecular targets of drug molecules and Derek™ for Windows expert system software to predict chemical structural alerts and plausible MOAs for the AEs. AEs were clustered into five types of liver injury: liver enzyme disorders, cytotoxic injury, cholestasis and jaundice, bile duct disorders, and gall bladder disorders, and six types of urinary tract injury: acute renal disorders, nephropathies, bladder disorders, kidney function tests, blood in urine, and urolithiasis. Results showed that drug-related AEs were highly correlated with: (1) known drug class warnings, (2) predicted off-target activities of the drugs, and (3) a specific subset of clinical indications for which the drug may or may not have been prescribed.