Prediction of inhibitory activity of epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors using grid search-projection pursuit regression method

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) protein tyrosine kinase (PTK) is an important protein target for anti-tumor drug discovery. To identify potential EGFR inhibitors, we conducted a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) study on the inhibitory activity of a series of quinazoline derivatives against EGFR tyrosine kinase. Two 2D-QSAR models were developed based on the best multi-linear regression (BMLR) and grid-search assisted projection pursuit regression (GS-PPR) methods. The results demonstrate that the inhibitory activity of quinazoline derivatives is strongly correlated with their polarizability, activation energy, mass distribution, connectivity, and branching information. Although the present investigation focused on EGFR, the approach provides a general avenue in the structure-based drug development of different protein receptor inhibitors.