MultiCASE Platform for In Silico Toxicology.

Predictive and computational toxicology, a highly scientific and research-based field, is rapidly progressing with wider acceptance by regulatory agencies around the world. Almost every aspect of the field has seen fundamental changes during the last decade due to the availability of more data, usage, and acceptance of a variety of predictive tools and an increase in the overall awareness. Also, the influence from the recent explosive developments in the field of artificial intelligence has been significant. However, the need for sophisticated, easy to use and well-maintained software platforms for in silico toxicological assessments remains very high. The MultiCASE suite of software is one such platform that consists of an integrated collection of software programs, tools, and databases. While providing easy-to-use and highly useful tools that are relevant at present, it has always remained at the forefront of research and development by inventing new technologies and discovering new insights in the area of QSAR, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. This chapter gives the background, an overview of the software and databases involved, and a brief description of the usage methodology with the aid of examples.

Management of pharmaceutical ICH M7 (Q)SAR predictions - The impact of model updates.

Pharmaceutical applicants conduct (Q)SAR assessments on identified and theoretical impurities to predict their mutagenic potential. Two complementary models-one rule-based and one statistical-based-are used, followed by expert review. (Q)SAR models are continuously updated to improve predictions, with new versions typically released on a yearly basis. Numerous releases of (Q)SAR models will occur during the typical 6-7 years of drug development until new drug registration. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact of model updates on impurity mutagenicity predictions over time. Compounds representative of pharmaceutical impurities were analyzed with three rule- and three statistical-based models covering a 4-8 year period, with the individual time frame being dependent on when the individual models were initially made available. The largest changes in the combined outcome of two complementary models were from positive or equivocal to negative and from negative to equivocal. Importantly, the cumulative change of negative to positive predictions was small in all models (<5%) and was further reduced when complementary models were combined in a consensus fashion. We conclude that model updates of the type evaluated in this manuscript would not necessarily require re-running a (Q)SAR prediction unless there is a specific need. However, original (Q)SAR predictions should be evaluated when finalizing the commercial route of synthesis for marketing authorization.

Transitioning to composite bacterial mutagenicity models in ICH M7 (Q)SAR analyses.

The International Council on Harmonisation (ICH) M7(R1) guideline describes the use of complementary (quantitative) structure-activity relationship ((Q)SAR) models to assess the mutagenic potential of drug impurities in new and generic drugs. Historically, the CASE Ultra and Leadscope software platforms used two different statistical-based models to predict mutations at G-C (guanine-cytosine) and A-T (adenine-thymine) sites, to comprehensively assess bacterial mutagenesis. In the present study, composite bacterial mutagenicity models covering multiple mutation types were developed. These new models contain more than double the number of chemicals (n = 9,254 and n = 13,514) than the corresponding non-composite models and show better toxicophore coverage. Additionally, the use of a single composite bacterial mutagenicity model simplifies impurity analysis in an ICH M7 (Q)SAR workflow by reducing the number of model outputs requiring review. An external validation set of 388 drug impurities representing proprietary pharmaceutical chemical space showed performance statistics ranging from of 66-82% in sensitivity, 91-95% in negative predictivity and 96% in coverage. This effort represents a major enhancement to these (Q)SAR models and their use under ICH M7(R1), leading to improved patient safety through greater predictive accuracy, applicability, and efficiency when assessing the bacterial mutagenic potential of drug impurities.

Computing similarity between structural environments of mutagenicity alerts.

This article describes a method to generate molecular fingerprints from structural environments of mutagenicity alerts and calculate similarity between them. This approach was used to improve classification accuracy of alerts and for searching structurally similar analogues of an alerting chemical. It builds fingerprints using molecular fragments from the vicinity of the alerts and automatically accounts for the activating and deactivating/mitigating features of alerts needed for accurate predictions. This study also demonstrates the usefulness of transfer learning in which a distributed representation of chemical fragments was first trained on millions of unlabelled chemicals and then used for generating fingerprints and similarity search on smaller data sets labelled with Ames test outcomes. The distributed fingerprints gave better prediction performance and increased coverage compared to traditional binary fingerprints. The methodology was applied to four common mutagenic functionalities-primary aromatic amine, aromatic nitro, epoxide and alkyl chloride. Effects of various hyperparameters on prediction accuracy and test coverage for the k-nearest neighbours prediction method are also described, e.g. similarity thresholds, number of neighbours and size of the alert environment.

Improvement of quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) tools for predicting Ames mutagenicity: outcomes of the Ames/QSAR International Challenge Project.

The International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) M7 guideline allows the use of in silico approaches for predicting Ames mutagenicity for the initial assessment of impurities in pharmaceuticals. This is the first international guideline that addresses the use of quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models in lieu of actual toxicological studies for human health assessment. Therefore, QSAR models for Ames mutagenicity now require higher predictive power for identifying mutagenic chemicals. To increase the predictive power of QSAR models, larger experimental datasets from reliable sources are required. The Division of Genetics and Mutagenesis, National Institute of Health Sciences (DGM/NIHS) of Japan recently established a unique proprietary Ames mutagenicity database containing 12140 new chemicals that have not been previously used for developing QSAR models. The DGM/NIHS provided this Ames database to QSAR vendors to validate and improve their QSAR tools. The Ames/QSAR International Challenge Project was initiated in 2014 with 12 QSAR vendors testing 17 QSAR tools against these compounds in three phases. We now present the final results. All tools were considerably improved by participation in this project. Most tools achieved >50% sensitivity (positive prediction among all Ames positives) and predictive power (accuracy) was as high as 80%, almost equivalent to the inter-laboratory reproducibility of Ames tests. To further increase the predictive power of QSAR tools, accumulation of additional Ames test data is required as well as re-evaluation of some previous Ames test results. Indeed, some Ames-positive or Ames-negative chemicals may have previously been incorrectly classified because of methodological weakness, resulting in false-positive or false-negative predictions by QSAR tools. These incorrect data hamper prediction and are a source of noise in the development of QSAR models. It is thus essential to establish a large benchmark database consisting only of well-validated Ames test results to build more accurate QSAR models.

Critical evaluation of human oral bioavailability for pharmaceutical drugs by using various cheminformatics approaches.

PURPOSE: Oral bioavailability (%F) is a key factor that determines the fate of a new drug in clinical trials. Traditionally, %F is measured using costly and time-consuming experimental tests. Developing computational models to evaluate the %F of new drugs before they are synthesized would be beneficial in the drug discovery process. METHODS: We employed Combinatorial Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship approach to develop several computational %F models. We compiled a %F dataset of 995 drugs from public sources. After generating chemical descriptors for each compound, we used random forest, support vector machine, k nearest neighbor, and CASE Ultra to develop the relevant QSAR models. The resulting models were validated using five-fold cross-validation. RESULTS: The external predictivity of %F values was poor (R(2) = 0.28, n = 995, MAE = 24), but was improved (R(2) = 0.40, n = 362, MAE = 21) by filtering unreliable predictions that had a high probability of interacting with MDR1 and MRP2 transporters. Furthermore, classifying the compounds according to the %F values (%F < 50% as "low", %F ≥ 50% as 'high") and developing category QSAR models resulted in an external accuracy of 76%. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we developed predictive %F QSAR models that could be used to evaluate new drug compounds, and integrating drug-transporter interactions data greatly benefits the resulting models.

Effectiveness of CASE Ultra Expert System in Evaluating Adverse Effects of Drugs.

Purpose of this pilot study is to test the QSAR expert system CASE Ultra for adverse effect prediction of drugs. 870 drugs from the SIDER adverse effect dataset were tested using CASE Ultra for carcinogenicity, genetic, liver, cardiac, renal and reproductive toxicity. 47 drugs that were withdrawn from market since the 1950s were also evaluated for potential risks using CASE Ultra and compared them with the actual reasons for which the drugs were recalled. For the whole SIDER test set (n=870), sensitivity and specificity of the carcinogenicity predictions are 66.67 % and 82.17 % respectively; for liver toxicity: 78.95 %, 78.50 %; cardiotoxicity: 69.07 %, 57.57 %; renal toxicity: 46.88 %, 67.90 %; and reproductive toxicity: 100.00 %, 61.10 %. For the SIDER test chemicals not present in the training sets of the models, sensitivity and specificity of carcinogenicity predictions are 100.00 % and 88.89 % respectively (n=404); for liver toxicity: 100.00 %, 51.33 % (n=115); cardiotoxicity: 100.00 %, 20.45 % (n=94); renal toxicity: 100.00 %, 45.54 % (n=115); and reproductive toxicity: 100.00 %, 48.57 % (n=246). CASE Ultra correctly recognized the relevant toxic effects in 43 out of the 47 withdrawn drugs. It predicted all 9 drugs that were not part of the training set of the models, as unsafe.

Optimizing predictive performance of CASE Ultra expert system models using the applicability domains of individual toxicity alerts.

Fragment based expert system models of toxicological end points are primarily comprised of a set of substructures that are statistically related to the toxic property in question. These special substructures are often referred to as toxicity alerts, toxicophores, or biophores. They are the main building blocks/classifying units of the model, and it is important to define the chemical structural space within which the alerts are expected to produce reliable predictions. Furthermore, defining an appropriate applicability domain is required as part of the OECD guidelines for the validation of quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs). In this respect, this paper describes a method to construct applicability domains for individual toxicity alerts that are part of the CASE Ultra expert system models. Defining applicability domain for individual alerts was necessary because each CASE Ultra model is comprised of multiple alerts, and different alerts of a model usually represent different toxicity mechanisms and cover different structural space; the use of an applicability domain for the overall model is often not adequate. The domain for each alert was constructed using a set of fragments that were found to be statistically related to the end point in question as opposed to using overall structural similarity or physicochemical properties. Use of the applicability domains in reducing false positive predictions is demonstrated. It is now possible to obtain ROC (receiver operating characteristic) profiles of CASE Ultra models by applying domain adherence cutoffs on the alerts identified in test chemicals. This helps in optimizing the performance of a model based on their true positive-false positive prediction trade-offs and reduce drastic effects on the predictive performance caused by the active/inactive ratio of the model's training set. None of the major currently available commercial expert systems for toxicity prediction offer the possibility to explore a model's full range of sensitivity-specificity spectrum, and therefore, the methodology developed in this study can be of benefit in improving the predictive ability of the alert based expert systems.

Benchmark performance of MultiCASE Inc. software in Ames mutagenicity set.

The predictive performances of MC4PC were evaluated using its learning machine functionality. Its superior characteristics are demonstrated in this following up study using the newly published Ames mutagenicity benchmark set.

MultiCASE Expert Systems and the REACH Initiative.

ABSTRACT This article is a review of the MultiCASE Inc. software and expert systems and their use to assess acute toxicity, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and other health effects. It is demonstrated that MultiCASE expert systems satisfy the guidelines of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) principles and that the portfolio of available endpoints closely overlaps with the list of tests required by REACH.

ESP: a method to predict toxicity and pharmacological properties of chemicals using multiple MCASE databases.

We describe here the development of a computer program which uses a new method called Expert System Prediction (ESP), to predict toxic end points and pharmacological properties of chemicals based on multiple modules created by the MCASE artificial intelligence system. The modules are generally based on different biological models measuring related end points. The purpose is to improve the decision making process regarding the overall activity or inactivity of the chemicals and also to enable rapid in silico screening. ESP evaluates the significance of the biophores from a different viewpoint and uses this information for predicting the activity of new chemicals. We have used a unique encoding system to represent relevant features of a chemical in the form of a pattern vector and a genetic artificial neural network (GA-ANN) to gain knowledge of the relationship between these patterns and the overall pharmacological property. The effectiveness of ESP is illustrated in the prediction of general carcinogenicity of a diverse set of chemicals using MCASE male/female rats and mice carcinogenicity modules.

ADME evaluation. 2. A computer model for the prediction of intestinal absorption in humans.

PURPOSE: To develop a computational method to rapidly evaluate human intestinal absorption, one of the drug properties included in the term ADME (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion). Poor ADME properties are the most important reason for drug failure in clinical development. METHODS: The model developed is based on a modified contribution group method in which the basic parameters are structural descriptors identified by the CASE program, together with the number of hydrogen bond donors. RESULTS: The human intestinal absorption model is a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) that includes 37 structural descriptors derived from the chemical structures of a data set containing 417 drugs. The model was able to predict the percentage of drug absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract with an r2 of 0.79 and a standard deviation of 12.32% of the compounds from the training set. The standard deviation for an external test set (50 drugs) was 12.34%. CONCLUSIONS: The availability of reliable and fast models like the one we propose here to predict ADME/Tox properties could help speed up the process of finding compounds with improved properties, ultimately making the entire drug discovery process shorter and more cost efficient.