Linear and nonlinear quantitative structure-property relationship modelling of skin permeability

In this work, quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) models were developed to estimate skin permeability based on theoretically derived molecular descriptors and a diverse set of experimental data. The newly developed method combining modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO) and multiple linear regression (MLR) was used to select important descriptors and develop the linear model using a training set of 225 compounds. The adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was used as an efficient nonlinear method to correlate the selected descriptors with experimental skin permeability data (log <i>Kp</i>). The linear and nonlinear models were assessed by internal and external validation. The obtained models with three descriptors show good predictive ability for the test set, with coefficients of determination for the MPSO-MLR and ANFIS models equal to 0.874 and 0.890, respectively. The QSPR study suggests that hydrophobicity (encoded as log <i>P</i>) is the most important factor in transdermal penetration.