'Structure-activity relationship' { 'SAR' } is the traditional Practices of
Medicinal chemistry which try to modify the effect or the potency {ie. Activity} of Bioactive chemical compound by modifying its
Chemical structure. traditional medicinal chemists were using the chemical techniques of synthesis to insert new chemical groups into the biomedical compound and test the modifications in its biological Effect .
That enabled them to determine the responsible chemical groups for evoking the biological effect in the Organism . Later this method has been developed into trial to build mathematical relationships between the Chemical structure and the biological activity , that is what is know as
Qsar .
SAR and SAR paradox
The basic assumption for all molecule based
hypotheses is that similar molecules have similar activities. This principle is also called 'S'tructure-'A'ctivity 'R'elationship (SAR). The underlying problem is therefore how to define a ''small'' difference on a molecular level, since each kind of activity, e.g.
reaction ability,
biotransformation ability,
solubility, target activity, and so on, might depend on another difference. A good example was given in the
bioisosterism review of Patanie/LaVoie.
[1]
From the
computer science standpoint, the
no-free-lunch theorem proves that no general
algorithm can exist to define e.g. a ''small'' difference for always getting the best
hypothesis.
In general, one is more interested in finding strong
trends. Created
hypotheses usually rely on a
finite number of chemical data. Thus, the
induction principle should be respected to avoid
overfitted hypotheses and deriving overfitted and useless interpretations on structural/molecular data.
The SAR paradox refers to the fact that it is not the case that all similar molecules have similar activities.
References
1. G. A. Patani, E. J. LaVoie, ''Bioisosterism: A Rational Approach in Drug Design''. Chem. Rev., 1996, 96, 3147-3176.
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