Atom, atom-type and total molecular linear indices as a promising approach for bioorganic and medicinal chemistry: theoretical and experimental assessment of a novel method for virtual screening and rational design of new lead anthelmintic.

Abstract Helminth infections are a medical problem in the world nowadays. In this paper a novel atom-level chemical descriptor has been applied to estimate the anthelmintic activity. Total and local linear indices and linear discriminant analysis were used to obtain a quantitative model that discriminates between anthelmintic and non-anthelmintic drug-like compounds. The discriminant model has an accuracy of 90.11% in the training set, with a high Matthews’ correlation coefficient (MCC = 0.80). To assess the robustness and predictive power of the obtained model, internal (leave-n-out) and external validation process was performed. The QSAR model correctly classified 88.55% of compounds in t…