Theoretical hydrogen bonding parameters for drug design

Hydrogen bonding interactions play a major role in many chemical and biological processes. This article describes the development of a method for the quantitative estimation of the hydrogen-bonding donor strengths of OH/NH moieties and of the hydrogen bonding acceptor strengths of O/N atoms in different chemical structures. The method is based on the correlation of experimentally observed hydrogen-bonding strengths with quantum-mechanical derived properties, calculated on the acceptor atom (for hydrogen-bond acceptors) and on the heavy atom attached to the donor hydrogen (for hydrogen-bond donors). The properties giving the best correlation with the experimental hydrogen bonding scales were electrophilic superdelocalizability and self-atom polarizability. The best equations found have been implemented in a Web-based tool for hydrogen-bond strength prediction.