Drug design of new 5-HT6R antagonists aided by artificial neural networks.

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most frequent illness and cause of death amongst the age related-neurodegenerative disorders. The Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI) reported in 2019 that over 50 million people were living with dementia in the world and this number could potentially be around 152 million by 2050.5-hydroxtryptamine subtype 6 receptor (5-HT6R) has been identified as a potential anti-amnesic drug target and therefore, the administration of 5-HT6R antagonists can likely mitigate the memory loss and intellectual deterioration associated with AD. Herein, computational tools were applied to design new 5-HT6 antagonists and their biological activity values were predicted by our QSAR model obtained from Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The proposed compounds here from the QSAR-ANN model presented significant biological activity values and some of them have achieved pKi above 9.00. Furthermore, our results suggest that the presence of halogen atoms (especially bromine) linked to the aromatic ring at para-position (HYD) contribute considerably to the increase of the biological activity values while bulky groups in the PI position do not culminate with the increase antagonist activity of compounds here analyzed. Finally, the ADME/Tox profile as well as the synthetic accessibility of new proposed compounds qualify them to go on further with experimental procedures and thenceforward their antagonist effects can be confirmed.

Accurate Gaussian basis sets for atomic and molecular calculations obtained from the generator coordinate method with polynomial discretization.

Accurate Gaussian basis sets for atoms from H to Ba were obtained by means of the generator coordinate Hartree-Fock (GCHF) method based on a polynomial expansion to discretize the Griffin-Wheeler-Hartree-Fock equations (GWHF). The discretization of the GWHF equations in this procedure is based on a mesh of points not equally distributed in contrast with the original GCHF method. The results of atomic Hartree-Fock energies demonstrate the capability of these polynomial expansions in designing compact and accurate basis sets to be used in molecular calculations and the maximum error found when compared to numerical values is only 0.788 mHartree for indium. Some test calculations with the B3LYP exchange-correlation functional for N2, F2, CO, NO, HF, and HCN show that total energies within 1.0 to 2.4 mHartree compared to the cc-pV5Z basis sets are attained with our contracted bases with a much smaller number of polarization functions (2p1d and 2d1f for hydrogen and heavier atoms, respectively). Other molecular calculations performed here are also in very good accordance with experimental and cc-pV5Z results. The most important point to be mentioned here is that our generator coordinate basis sets required only a tiny fraction of the computational time when compared to B3LYP/cc-pV5Z calculations.

Molecular properties of the PCO radical: heat of formation and the isomerization pathways.

The potential energy surface of [P,C,O] system in the ground state was investigated by quantum chemical methods. Four different isomers were characterized at the B3LYP/aug-cc-pVTZ: COP (i1), cPCO (i2), PCO (i3), and CPO (i4). The linear species i3 is the global minimum in the ground state surface, while i4 is a bent structure, and i2 is a cyclic isomer. In view to evaluate the bond nature of each isomer, a QTAIM and a NBO analyses were applied. The triangular species presents a ring critical point which confirms its cyclic structure instead of a T-shape one. The stability increases in the following order: i3 > i2 > i1 > i4. The energy gap between i3 and i2 ranges from 49.20 to 51.15 kcal mol(-1). The reaction barrier energies that converge into the direction of i3 showed values around 10 kcal mol(-1), while the reverse barriers are considerably large (62.85 kcal mol(-1)). The i3 heat of formation at 298 K ranges from 11.83 to 19.41 kcal mol(-1).