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Computational Investigation of Drug Phototoxicity: Photosafety Assessment, Photo-Toxophore Identification, and Machine Learning

Schmidt F, Wenzel J, Halland N, Güssregen S, Delafoy L, Czich A

Chemical research in toxicology, 2019

Abstract

One of the most appreciated capabilities of computational toxicology is to support the design of pharmaceuticals with reduced toxicological hazard. To this end, we have strengthened our drug photosafety assessments by applying novel computer models for the anticipation of in vitro phototoxicity and human photosensitization. These models are typically used in pharmaceutical discovery projects as part of the compound toxicity assessments and compound optimization methods. To ensure good data quality and aiming at models with global applicability we separately compiled and curated highly chemically diverse data sets from 3T3 NRU phototoxicity reports (450 compounds) and clinical photosensitization alerts (1419 compounds) which are provided as supplements. The latter data gives rise to a comprehensive list of explanatory fragments for visual guidance, termed phototoxophores, by application of a Bayesian statistics approach. To extend beyond the domain of well sampled fragments we applied machine learning techniques based on explanatory descriptors such as pharmacophoric fingerprints or, more important, accurate electronic energy descriptors. Electronic descriptors were extracted from quantum chemical computations at the density functional theory (DFT) level. Accurate UV/vis spectral absorption descriptors and pharmacophoric fingerprints turned out to be necessary for predictive computer models, which were both derived from Deep Neural Networks but also the simpler Random…

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