CoMFA, CoMSIA, and molecular hologram QSAR studies of novel neuronal nAChRs ligands-open ring analogues of 3-pyridyl ether.

3-Pyridyl ethers are excellent nAChRs ligands, which show high subtype selectivity and binding affinity to alpha4beta2 nAChR. Although the quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) of nAChRs ligands has been widely investigated using various classes of compounds, the open ring analogues of 3-pyridyl ethers have been less involved in these studies due to the greater flexibility of this kind of molecule. In this study, two three-dimensional QSAR techniques and one two-dimensional QSAR technique were used to correlate the molecular structure with the biological activity of 64 analogues of 3-pyridyl ethers. Three different QSAR models were established. Their performances in the QSAR studies of open ring analogues of 3-pyridyl ethers were evaluated by the statistical values in the corresponding models. All models exhibited satisfactory predictive power. Of these models, the HQSAR behaved optimally in terms of the statistical values with q2=0.845, r2=0.897. Finally, graphic interpretation of three different models provided coincident information about the interaction of the ligand-receptor complex and supplied useful guidelines for the synthesis of novel, potent ligands.