Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) form a subclass of the nuclear receptor superfamily and are attractive drug targets for the development of novel therapeutic agents to treat several metabolic disorders, such as dyslipidemia and type 2 diabetes mellitus. In this work, hologram quantitative structure-activity relationship (HQSAR) studies were carried out on a series of potent PPARδ ligands. Significant correlation coefficients (r² = 0.947 and q² = 0.791) were obtained, indicating the reliability of the 2D QSAR model in predicting the biological activity of untested compounds. The 2D model was then used to predict the potency of an external test set, and the predicted values obtained from the HQSAR model were in good agreement with the experimental results. The final QSAR model, along with the information obtained from 2D contribution maps, should be useful for the design of novel PPARδ ligands having improved potency.
PPARδ; bioactive ligands; hologram QSAR; drug design
