Endothelin antagonists: search for surrogates of methylendioxyphenyl by means of a Kohonen neural network.

The methylendioxyphenyl group, present in a number of potent endothelin receptor antagonists, could have undesirable metabolic interactions with cytochrome P450 in vivo. Using a self-organizing neural network we analysed the features of molecular electrostatic potentials of several endothelin receptor ligands. A library of small "fragments and functional groups" together with their corresponding Kohonen maps was generated. By means of this Kohonen map library we discovered the benzothiadiazole group as a surrogate for methylendioxyphenyl.