A virtual screening method for prediction of the HERG potassium channel liability of compound libraries

A computer-based method has been developed for prediction of the hERG (human ether-à-go-go related gene) K(+)-channel affinity of low molecular weight compounds. hERG channel blockage is a major concern in drug design, as such blocking agents can cause sudden cardiac death. Various techniques were applied to finding appropriate molecular descriptors for modeling structure-activity relationships: substructure analysis, self-organizing maps (SOM), principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares fitting (PLS), and supervised neural networks. The most accurate prediction system was based on an artificial neural network. In a validation study, 93 % of the nonblocking agents and 71 % of the hERG channel blockers were correctly classified. This virtual screening method can be used for general compound-library shaping and combinatorial library design.