Abstract

Aim and Objective: In this study, chemometric methods as correlation analysis, cluster analysis (CA), principal component analysis (PCA), and factor analysis (FA) have been used to reduce the number of chromatographic parameters (logk/logkw) and various (e.g., 0D, 1D, 2D, 3D) structural descriptors for three different groups of drugs, such as 12 analgesic drugs, 11 cardiovascular drugs and 36 “other” compounds and especially to choose the most important data of them.

Material and Methods: All chemometric analyses have been carried out, graphically presented and also discussed for each group of drugs. At first, compounds’ structural and chromatographic parameters were correlated. The best results of correlation analysis were as follows: correlation coefficients like R = 0.93, R = 0.88, R = 0.91 for cardiac medications, analgesic drugs, and 36 “other” compounds, respectively. Next, part of molecular and HPLC experimental data from each group of drugs were submitted to FA/PCA and CA techniques.

Results: Almost all results obtained by FA or PCA, and total data variance, from all analyzed parameters (experimental and calculated) were explained by first two/three factors: 84.28%, 76.38 %, 69.71% for cardiovascular drugs, for analgesic drugs and for 36 “other” compounds, respectively. Compounds clustering by CA method had similar characteristic as those obtained by FA/PCA. In our paper, statistical classification of mentioned drugs performed has been widely characterized and discussed in case of their molecular structure and pharmacological activity.

Conclusion: Proposed QSAR strategy of reduced number of parameters could be useful starting point for further statistical analysis as well as support for designing new drugs and predicting their possible activity.

Keywords: HPLC parameters, structural descriptors, lipophilicity, correlation analysis, CA, PCA, FA.