Identification of average molecular weight (AMW) as a useful chemical descriptor to discriminate liver injury-inducing drugs

PLoS One. 2021 Jun 25;16(6):e0253855. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0253855. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is one of major causes of discontinuing drug development and withdrawing drugs from the market. In this study, we investigated chemical properties associated with DILI using in silico methods, to identify a physicochemical property useful for DILI screening at the early stages of drug development. Total of 652 drugs, including 432 DILI-positive drugs (DILI drugs) and 220 DILI-negative drugs (no-DILI drugs) were selected from Liver Toxicity Knowledge Base of US Food and Drug Administration. Decision tree models were constructed using 2,473 descriptors as explanatory variables. In the final model, the descriptor AMW, representing average molecular weight, was found to be at the first node and showed the highest importance value. With AMW alone, 276 DILI drugs (64%) and 156 no-DILI drugs (71%) were correctly classified. Discrimination with AMW was then performed using therapeutic category information. The performance of discrimination depended on the category and significantly high performance (>0.8 balanced accuracy) was obtained in some categories. Taken together, the present results suggest AMW as a novel descriptor useful for detecting drugs with DILI risk. The information presented may be valuable for the safety assessment of drug candidates at the early stage of drug development.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury / epidemiology
  • Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury / pathology
  • Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury / prevention & control*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Databases, Factual
  • Drug Development
  • Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions / diagnosis*
  • Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions / epidemiology
  • Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions / pathology
  • Humans
  • Knowledge Bases
  • Liver / drug effects*
  • Molecular Weight
  • Pharmaceutical Preparations / chemistry*
  • United States
  • United States Food and Drug Administration

Substances

  • Pharmaceutical Preparations

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Sciences and Technology of Japan (grant numbers 17K08419) (TS, KY) and a grant from The Mochida Memorial Foundation for Medical and Pharmaceutical Research (FY 2020) (TS, KY). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.