Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship Study of a Benzimidazole-Derived Series Inhibiting Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv

This work was carried out on a series of twenty-two (22) benzimidazole derivatives with inhibitory activities against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv by applying the Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR) method. The molecules were optimized at the level DFT/B3LYP/6−31 + G (d, p), to obtain the molecular descriptors. We used three statistical learning tools namely, the linear multiple regression (LMR) method, the nonlinear regression (NLMR) and the artificial neural network (ANN) method. These methods allowed us to obtain three (3) quantitative models from the quantum descriptors that are, chemical potential (μ), polarizability (α), bond length l (C = N), and lipophilicity. These models showed good statistical performance. Among these, the ANN has a significantly better predictive ability R 2 = 0.9995; RMSE = 0.0149; F = 31879.0548. The external validation tests verify all the criteria of Tropsha et al. and Roy et al. Also, the internal validation tests show that the model has a very satisfactory internal predictive character and can be considered as robust. Moreover, the applicability range of this model determined from the levers shows that a prediction of the pMIC of the new benzimidazole derivatives is acceptable when its lever value is lower than 1.