Title:
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The Prediction of Molecular Properties Using Similarity Searching and Free-Wilson Analysis
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The overall aim of this thesis is to predict biological properties of molecules. The
thesis first reports on the use of similarity searching for property prediction. The
predictions were made by taking the value of a compound's k-nearest neighbours
found from a similarity search. The initial work used structural descriptors,
followed by a compound's property values (e.g. activity values across several
different targets) as descriptors. The use of property value descriptors instead of
classical structural descriptors showed promising results for molecular property
prediction, but due to the datasets available a concrete conclusion could not be made
about this technique. The use of Turbo Similarity Searching (TSS) was then
investigated with the use of k-nearest neighbour predictions based on structural
descriptors.
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The second part of the thesis investigated the use of Free-Wilson Analysis (FWA) in
conjunction with lead-optimisation and library design. It was shown that datasets
can be classified into three classes: those which are successful with respect to FWA;
those which are not; and those which are partially successful. For the partially
successful cases it was demonstrated that it is possible to identify R-groups which do
not have an independent contribution to the property being investigated. It was also
found that 30% of the compounds in a full combinatorial library are sufficient to
generate a successful model. Ranking the R-groups at a position on a scaffold
according to their property contributions (for several different properties) can be
used to generate an R-grollp profile for the R-groups, as long as a FWA is successful
for the properties being considered.
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