QSPR/QSAR models for prediction of the physico-chemical properties and biological activity of polychlorinated diphenyl ethers (PCDEs)

Polychlorinated diphenyl ethers (PCDEs) are a group of important persistent organic pollutants. In the present study, geometrical optimization and electrostatic potential calculations have been performed for all 209 PCDE congeners at the HF/6-31G* level of theory. A number of statistically-based parameters have been obtained Linear relationships between gas-chromatographic relative retention time (RRT), n-octanol/water partition coefficient (log K-OW), 298 K supercooled liquid vapour pressures (log p(L)), aqueous solubilities (log.S-wL) and the immunotoxicity values (log ED50) of PCDEs and the structural descriptors have been established by multiple linear regression method. The result shows that the quantities derived from electrostatic potential V-s,V-min, Sigma Vs+Vs,av-Pi,sigma(2),nu and N-v(i) with the number of the chlorine atoms on the two phenyl rings (Na) can be well used to express the quantitative structure-property (activity) relationships of PCDEs Good predictive capabilities have also been demonstrated by leavegroup(1/5)-out cross-validation and external test set Based on these equations, the predicted values have been presented for those PCDE congeners whose experimentally determined physico-chemical properties are unavailable (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.