3D-Quantitative structure-activity relationships of 2,4,5- and 2,3,4,5-substituted imidazoles as a novel class of potent and nontoxic modulators of Pgp mediated MDR were investigated using CoMFA and COMSIA approaches. The best CoMFA model obtained from 46 imidazole analogues is a two-component model with the following statistics. R-cv(2), = 0.643, RMSEcv = 0.360 for the cross-validation, and R-2 = 0.767, RMSE = 0.290 for the fitted. The best COMSIA model obtained is also a two-component model with the following statistics. R-cv(2)=0.619, RMSEcv=0.372 for the cross-validation, and R-2=0.765, RMSE=0.292 for the fitted. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.