Prediction of progesterone receptor binding potency, agonism and antagonism using machine learning models

The use of Machine Learning (ML) models to predict the binding potency of chemicals to estrogen and androgen receptors has become well-established, helping in the prioritization of chemicals for endocrine disruption testing. However, the potential of ML models for other endocrine targets, such as the progesterone receptor (PR), remains underexplored. In this study, we developed an ML model to predict PR binding affinity and assess the agonistic/antagonistic properties of chemicals. The model achieved a training accuracy of 99.72% and a validation accuracy of 74.46%. External validation was conducted on a dataset of approximately 10,000 chemicals, including 5720 compounds from the training set for which there is a known outcome. External predictions aligned closely with experimental in vitro data, achieving an accuracy of 96.85%. Additionally, the model successfully predicted PR binding affinity and agonistic/antagonistic properties for chemicals without available experimental data. In summary, this study highlights the potential of ML as an effective tool for prioritizing chemicals for future in vitro and in vivo testing of PR binding potency and agonistic/antagonistic properties of chemicals.