Structural requirements of 3-carboxyl-4(1H)-quinolones as potential antimalarials from 2D and 3D QSAR analysis

Malaria is a fatal tropical and subtropical disease caused by the protozoal species Plasmodium. Many commonly available antimalarial drugs and therapies are becoming ineffective because of the emergence of multidrug resistant Plasmodium falciparum, which drives the need for the development of new antimalarial drugs. Recently, a series of 3-carboxyl-4(1H)-quinolone analogs, derived from the famous compound endochin, were reported as promising candidates for orally efficacious antimalarials. In this study, to analyze the structure-activity relationships (SAR) of these quinolones and investigate the structural requirements for antimalarial activity, the 2D multiple linear regressions (MLR) method and 3D comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) and comparative molecular similarity indices analysis (CoMSIA) methods are employed to evolve different QSAR models. All these models give satisfactory results with highly accurate fitting and strong external predictive abilities for chemicals not used in model development. Furthermore, the contour maps from 3D models can provide an intuitive understanding of the key structure features responsible for the antimalarial activities. In conclusion, we summarize the detailed position-specific structural requirements of these derivatives accordingly. All these results are helpful for the rational design of new compounds with higher antimalarial bioactivities.