Prediction of the relationship between the structural features of andrographolide derivatives and α-glucosidase inhibitory activity: a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) study.

In order to predict the structural features responsible for α-glucosidase inhibitory activity, a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) analysis was performed on a series of andrographolide derivatives. To determine the quantitative relationship for the statistically significant models in terms of r (>0.8), F (99%) and Q(2) (>0.71) values were selected. The promising results we obtained could be used to predict the structural requirements for the inhibition of α-glucosidase activity. The models developed included: subdivided surface area, adjacency, surface volume and shape, molecular orbital package (MOPAC) and partial charge descriptors and showed a high correlation with the inhibitory activity. The descriptors used revealed that a van der Waals (vdW) surface with significant polar volume is favourable to the activity. The positive effect of the shape descriptors; PM3-LUMO and vsurf_wp7 and the negative effect of GCUT_PEOE_2 indicated that the active site may contain some nucleophilic positions that could interact with the ligand and the hydrogen acceptor and/or donor groups for hydrogen bonding with inhibitors.