Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR) Study of a Series of Benzimidazole Derivatives as Inhibitors of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae

A quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) has been carried out on a series of benzimidazole derivatives to identify the structural requirements for their inhibitory activity against yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A multiple linear regression (MLR) procedure was used to model the relationships between various physicochemical, steric, electronic, and structural molecular descriptors and antifungal activity of benzimidazole derivatives. The QSAR expressions were generated using a training set of 16 compounds and the predictive ability of the resulting models was evaluated against a test set of 8 compounds. The best QSAR models were further validated by leave one out technique as well as by the calculation of statistical parameters for the established theoretical models. Therefore, satisfactory relationships between antifungal activity and molecular descriptors were found. QSAR analysis reveals that lipophilicity descriptor (logP), dipole moment (DM) and surface area grid (SAG) govern the inhibitory activity of compounds studied against Saccharomyces cerevisiae.