Prediction of the permeability of neutral drugs inferred from their solvation properties.

Abstract

Determination of drug absorption is an important component of the drug discovery and development process in that it plays a key role in the decision to promote drug candidates to clinical trials. We have developed a method that, on the basis of an analysis of the dynamic distribution of water molecules around a compound obtained by molecular dynamics simulations, can compute a parameter-free value that correlates very well with the compound permeability measured using the human colon adenocarcinoma (Caco-2) cell line assay. The method has been tested on twenty-three neutral drugs for which a consistent set of experimental data is available. We show here that our method reproduces the experimental data better than other existing tools. Furthermore it provides a detailed view of the relationship between the hydration and the permeability properties of molecules. anna.tramontano@uniroma1.it Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.