Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationships of Natural-Product-Inspired, Aminoalkyl-Substituted 1-Benzopyrans as Novel Antiplasmodial Agents

On the basis of the finding that various aminoalkyl-substituted chromene and chromane derivatives possess strong and highly selective in vitro bioactivity against Plasmodium falciparum, the pathogen responsible for tropical malaria, we performed a structure–activity relationship study for such compounds. With structures and activity data of 52 congeneric compounds from our recent studies, we performed a three-dimensional quantitative structure–activity relationship (3D-QSAR) study using the comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) approach as implemented in the Open3DQSAR software. The resulting model displayed excellent internal and good external predictive power as well as good robustness. Besides insights into the molecular interactions and structural features influencing the antiplasmodial activity, this model now provides the possibility to predict the activity of further untested compounds to guide our further synthetic efforts to develop even more potent antiplasmodial chromenes/chromanes.