Traditional drug development includes compound synthesis and pre-clinical in-vitro and in-vivo studies to determine whether such a compound can be considered as a candidate for clinical trial. Such procedures are normally accompanied with enormous costs measured in billions of dollars and more than a decade of interdisciplinary endeavor. In addition to high investments, many of tested candidates in later stages of drug development might demonstrate lack of efficiency, poor pharmacokinetics, animal toxicity and adverse effects in humans. For this, modern process of drug development is based on combinatorial chemistry, genomics, chemometrics and in-silico processing. While one group of these computational methods focuses on biological activity, trying to forecast interactions with target receptors (toxicodynamic), others tend to predict the fate of the substance in the human body i.e. its absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME). Chemometrics has an important place in relating structural or property descriptors of a drug candidate to its biological activity (QSAR - Quantitative structure-activity relationship).
The 1,3,5-triazine (
s-triazine) heterocyclic system is today found in a number of bioactive molecules such as herbicides and pharmaceutical products (
1). Various triazine substituted molecules exhibit diverse biological activities, having thus been reported as potentially cardiotonic (
2,
3), anti-HIV (
4,
5), antitumor (
6) and anticancer agents (
7).
s-Triazine is a weak base with six-membered heterocyclic ring containing three nitrogens replacing carbon-hydrogen units in the benzene ring. The compound, so as its derivatives, has an excellent potential for the formation of non-covalent bonds, such as coordination and H-bonds, via its nitrogen ion-pairs (
8). Non-covalent bonds have a very important role in biological activity of these compounds (
9), but also in understanding of their physiological behavior, namely absorption, metabolism and elimination. Furthermore, such chemical properties of
s-triazines are responsible for their characteristic chromatographic behaviour.
Molecular lipophilicity is one of the major physicochemical properties affecting oral absorption, cell uptake, protein binding, blood-brain penetration, and metabolism of bioactive substances (
10). Cell membranes are relatively impermeable to hydrophilic compounds, so these are transported predominantly via paracellular route. Thus lipophilic character of the molecules enables passive diffusion through cell membrane and highly hydrophobic substances enter the cells easily. On the other hand, too high lipophilicity of drugs can be a limiting factor to oral absorption. In order to be absorbed via gut mucose, the substance needs first to be dissolved in hydrophilic mucose. Excessive lipophilicity is, thus, often linked to incomplete drug absorption after oral administration. Other mechanisms of compound transfer across the membrane not involving previous dissolution exist, such as endocytosis, but are mostly characteristic for large molecules (
11). It is also generally believed that very lipophilic compounds have greater affinity for plasma-protein binding and are easily transported across the blood-brain barrier (
12).
Chromatographic approach has been shown to be quite successful in modeling physicochemical and biological processes (
13,
14). Owing to its simplicity and efficiency, reversed-phase thin-layer chromatography appears especially attractive for lipophilicity determination (
15,
16). Taking into consideration that in reversed-phase chromatography solutes distribute between polar and nonpolar phases, calculated retention parameters can be adopted as indirect designators of compounds lipophilicity.
Considering the practical importance of s-triazine derivatives, the main objective of this study was to examine the retention behavior of four classes synthesized s-triazine derivatives in reversed-phase chromatographic systems of five different mobile phases. Novelty of the paper is the correlation between in-silico ADME properties of s-triazine derivatives and its retention behaviour in RP-HPTLC systems.
Chromatographic data were correlated to selected physicochemical properties related to ADME properties, obtained by the established computational medicinal chemistry methods (
17). Observed parameters included human intestinal absorption (HIA), plasma protein binding (PPB), blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetration, skin permeability (SP) and oral absorption (expressed as Madin-Darby canine kidney cells (MDCK) and human colorectal carcinoma cells (Caco-2) permeability). In addition, bonding affinities to different receptors (ion channel modulator (ICM), G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) and nuclear receptor (NRL)) were estimated for studied
s-triazine derivatives, as well as protease inhibition (PI) and kinase inhibition (KI) ability.
Statistical validity of established correlation was tested by standard statistical parameters, such as Fisher’s criterion (F), correlation coefficient (r) and standard deviation (s), and cross-validation parameters (cross-validated coefficient of determination - r2cv, adjusted coefficient of determination - r2adj, predicted residual sum of squares - PRESS, total sum of squares - TSS, PRESS/TSS ratio , standard deviation based on predicted residual sum of squares - SPRESS).
Principal component analysis (PCA), as a statistical tool for reducing dimensionality of a large number of interrelated variables and revelation of similarities among examined entities, was applied on the set of the calculated ADME properties of studied molecules. With PCA a set of new variables (principal components, PC) is defined instead of the original variables. PCs are formed by combination of the original data in such a way that the PC1 covers as much of the variation within the data set as posible. The PC2 describes the maximum amount of residual variation after the PC1 has been taken into consideration,
etc (
18). The scores plot of the two PC is a 2-D map, that provides a data overview and displays patterns or grouping within the data. The loadings plot shows relationships between variables that contribute to the positioning of the objects on the scores plot.