The Free-Wilson approach correlates the biological activity of parent structures and analogues bearing different substituents. In 1964, Free and Wilson derived a mathematical model representing structural features as 1s and 0s correlated to biological activity. The method assumes substituents make additive contributions to biological activity. Free-Wilson analysis directly relates structural features to biological properties using only presence/absence of substituents as descriptors. It represents activity as the sum of group contributions and a reference compound activity. Drawbacks include needing substitution at two positions and only predicting combinations previously analyzed.
2. Free Wilson Analysis
The Free-Wilson approach is truly a structure-activity
based methodology in which the biological activity of
the parent structure is measured and compared with the
activity of analogues bearing different substituents
Parent structure
Activity of analogues bearing
different substituent's
Biological activity
measured and compared
with
3. In 1964, Free and Wilson derived a mathematical
model that describes the presence and absence of certain
structural features, i.e. those groups that are represented
by the values 1 or 0 that correlate the resulting structural
matrix with biological activity values
The method of Free and Wilson is based upon an
additive mathematical model in which a particular
substituent in a specific position is assumed to make an
additive and constant contribution to the biological
activity of a molecule
4. Free and Wilson reasoned that the biological activity
for a set of analogues could be described by
the contributions that substituents or structural
elements make to the activity of a parent structure
5. Free-Wilson analysis is a regression technique using
the presence or absence of substituents or groups as
the only molecule descriptors in correlations with
biological activity
It is the only numerical method which directly relates
structural features with biological properties, in
contrast to Hansch analysis, where physicochemical
properties are correlated with biological activity
values
6. It is represented by equation
BA = 裡 a i x i + 亮
Where,
BA is the biological activity,
亮 is the activity contribution of reference compound ,
a i is the biological activity group contributions of the
substituents X1, X2,Xi in the different positions P of
compound,
x i denotes the presence (x i = 1) or absence (x i = 0) of
particular structural fragment
7. Drawbacks of Free Wilson analysis
At least two different positions of substitution must be
chemically modified
Predictions can only be made for new combinations of
substituent's already included in the analysis
Single point determinations obscure the statistical
results
mostly centered on the large number of parameters and
subsequent loss of the statistical degree of freedom.
8. In 1971, in an attempt to deal with limitations of this
approach, Fujita and Ban proposed a simplified approach
that solely focused on the additivity of group contribution.
LogA/A0 = 裡 G i X i
Where,
A and A0 represents the biological activity of the substituted
and unsubstituted compounds respectively,
G i is the activity of the sustituent,
X i had the value of 1 or 0 that corresponded to the presence or
absence of that substituent.
9. Mixed Hansch/Free-Wilson model
The similarity in approaches of Hansch analysis and Free-Wilson analysis allows
them to be used within the same framework
Log 1/C = ai + cj 个j + constant
ai is the contribution for each ith substituent,
个j is any physicochemical property of a substituent Xj.
This equation combines the advantages of Hansch and Free Wilson analysis and
widens the applicability of both methods.
Physicochemical parameters describe parts of the molecules with broad structural
variation, whereas indicator variables ai (Free Wilson type variables) encode the
effects of structural variations that cannot be described otherwise
A recent study of the Pglycoprotein inhibitory activity of 48 propafenone-type
modulators of multidrug resistance, using a combined Hansch/Free-Wilson approach
was deemed to have higher predictive ability than that of a stand-alone Free-Wilson
analysis