Simultaneous Prediction of four ATP‐binding Cassette Transporters' Substrates Using Multi‐label QSAR. Issue 10 (6th October 2016) - Aniceto, Natália
Abstract: Efflux by the ATP‐binding cassette (ABC) transporters affects the pharmacokinetic profile of drugs and it has been implicated in drug‐drug interactions as well as its major role in multi‐drug resistance in cancer. It is therefore important for the pharmaceutical industry to be able to understand what phenomena rule ABC substrate recognition. Considering a high degree of substrate overlap between various members of ABC transporter family, it is advantageous to employ a multi‐label classification approach where predictions made for one transporter can be used for modeling of the other ABC transporters. Here, we present decision tree‐based QSAR classification models able to simultaneously predict substrates and non‐substrates for BCRP1, P‐gp/MDR1 and MRP1 and MRP2, using a dataset of 1493 compounds. To this end, two multi‐label classification QSAR modelling approaches were adopted: Binary Relevance (BR) and Classifier Chain (CC). Even though both multi‐label models yielded similar predictive performances in terms of overall accuracies (close to 70 %), the CC model overcame the problem of skewed performance towards identifying substrates compared with non‐substrates, which is a common problem in the literature. The models were thoroughly validated by using external testing, applicability domain and activity cliffs characterization. In conclusion, a multi‐label classification approach is an appropriate alternative for the prediction of ABC efflux. Abstract :