Structural features of substituted triazole-linked chalcone derivatives as antimalarial activities against D₁₀ strains of Plasmodium falciparum: A QSAR approach

Abstract

A quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) was performed to analyze antimalarial activities against the D10 strains of Plasmodium falciparum of triazole-linked chalcone and dienone hybrid derivatives using partial least squares regression coupled with stepwise forward–backward variable selection method. QSAR analyses were performed on the available IC₅₀ D₁₀ strains of Plasmodium falciparum data based on theoretical molecular descriptors. The QSAR model developed gave good predictive correlation coefficient (r ²) of 0.8994, significant cross validated correlation coefficient (q ²) of 0.7689, r ² for external test set (r ²_pred ) of 0.8256, coefficient of correlation of predicted data set (r ²_pred,se ) rpred,se of 0.3276. The model shows that antimalarial activity is greatly affected by donor and electron-withdrawing substituents. The study implicates that chalcone and dienone rings should have strong donor and electron-withdrawing substituents as they increase the activity of chalcone. Results show that the predictive ability of the model is satisfactory, and it can be used for designing similar group of antimalarial compounds. The findings derived from this analysis along with other molecular modeling studies will be helpful in designing of the new potent antimalarial activity of clinical utility.