Human Intestinal Absorption Revisited: The 1998 Descriptors Survive, and the Method Extends to Permeability

In 1998 we predicted percent human intestinal absorption (HIA) for 86 drug and drug-like compounds from six molecular descriptors chosen by a genetic algorithm with a small neural network serving as the fitness function. That result rested on one division of the compounds into three sets: training, cross-validation and external prediction. Repeating the division shows it was a rather fortunate one. An extraction is one random draw from a wide distribution, so we repeat every experiment 250 times and report the result as a distribution. Across 250 stratified extractions, 14 match the published cross-validation error and only one matches the published external prediction error. Reconstructed this way, the published six descriptors give a mean extraction error roughly twice the external prediction value we reported in 1998 (Table 1). We then applied the same six descriptors to a larger set of 780 compounds from a public compilation. Under the 1998 network they give 22.50 %HIA units on training compounds against 25.77 on extracted compounds, whereas on the 86 they give 13.43 against 30.39. More compounds close the gap between fitting and prediction. Four datasets are modeled here: 780 small molecules with HIA measured in man, 3,771 small molecules and 1,281 cyclic peptides measured across Caco-2 cell monolayers, and 7,298 cyclic peptides measured across artificial membranes. Each is its own prediction problem, and one procedure is applied to all four. A genetic algorithm chooses which descriptors to use and how many, and a random forest grades each choice on compounds its own trees never saw. The descriptors chosen most often across the 250 extractions form one consensus set for each dataset. For absorption, 25 consensus descriptors under a random forest reach an extraction rms of 20.47 %HIA units at R 0.76. On the same compounds and the same extractions, the six 1998 descriptors under the 1998 network reach 25.77 at R 0.59. The four models are served at predicthia.ai, where a structure can be drawn or pasted, scored against its training set for similarity, and the training data with fitted models downloaded. Each model served is its fixed consensus set fitted on every compound in its dataset; the accuracy quoted beside a prediction comes from evaluating that same set across 250 extractions (Table 3). The fixed sets hold 25 descriptors for absorption, 55 for Caco-2 small-molecule permeability, 50 for Caco-2 peptide permeability and 25 for artificial-membrane permeability. Keywords: human intestinal absorption; QSPR; genetic algorithm; descriptor selection; cyclic peptides; membrane permeability; oral bioavailability; repeated extraction