Structural and chemical basis for enhanced affinity and potency for a large series of estrogen receptor ligands: 2D and 3D QSAR studies

The estrogen receptor (ER) is an important drug target for the development of novel therapeutic agents for the treatment of breast cancer. Progress towards the design of more potent and selective ER modulators requires the optimization of multiple ligand-receptor interactions. Comparative molecular field analyses (CoMFA) and hologram quantitative structure–activity relationships (HQSAR) were conducted on a large set of ERα modulators. Two training sets containing either 127 or 69 compounds were used to generate QSAR models for in vitro binding affinity and potency, respectively. Significant correlation coefficients (affinity models, CoMFA, r2 = 0.93 and q2 = 0.79; HQSAR, r2 = 0.92 and q2 = 0.71; potency models, CoMFA, r2 = 0.94 and q2 = 0.72; HQSAR, r2 = 0.92 and q2 = 0.74) were obtained, indicating the potential of the models for untested compounds. The generated models were validated using external test sets, and the predicted values were in good agreement with the experimental results. The final QSAR models as well as the information gathered from 3D contour maps should be useful for the design of novel ERα modulators having improved affinity and potency.