Pharmacophore modeling of Tyrosine Kinase inhibitors: 4-anilinoquinazoline derivatives

A pharmacophore model for the inhibition of Tyrosine Kinase is established that could serve as a guide for the rational design of high potent and selective inhibitors. Recently, quantitative structure-activity relationships for 4-anilinoquinazoline class of inhibitors to inhibit EGFR autophosphorylation are in great demand. We have developed a quantitatively predictive chemical function-based pharmacophore model by using Discovery Studio 2.1 software. The optimal hypothesis consists of four features: three hydrophobic (HYD), and one hydrogen bond donor (HBD) functions. The input for HypoGen was a training set of 16 compounds exhibiting IC₅₀ values ranging between 0.025 nM and 12000 nM, and having the output borne significant conventional coefficient of 0.97. To further validate our design rationale, protein- ligand docking software was used to elucidate the intra-molecular interactions. Therefore, the established pharmacophore model could help to a better understanding on how the substituents might influence the activity and afford important information for both ligand-based and structure-based drug designs.