Activity-based classification circumvents affinity prediction problems for pyrrolidine carboxamide inhibitors of InhA

Developing reliable structure-based activity prediction models for a particular ligand series can be challenging if the target is flexible and the affinity range of the training compounds is narrow. For a data set of 44 pyrrolidine carboxamide inhibitors of the mycobacterial enoyl-ACP-reductase InhA this proved to be case, as scoring methods of various origin and complexity did not succeed in providing practically useful correlations with experimental inhibition data. In contrast, logistic regression models for activity-based classification trained with combinations of scoring functions led to good separation of the more active inhibitors from the weakest compounds. The approach is suggested as an alternative in cases where classical scoring and ranking procedures fail.