Abstract:
Aromatic amine and aromatic nitro compounds were treated as undesirable moieties because of their mutagenic/carcinogenic potential. However, substantial number (215) of known drugs that containing aromatic amine/nitro group indicates the possible existence of these moieties in drug-like chemical space. The aim of this thesis was to establish whether partial charge on exocyclic nitrogen can be used to predict mutagenic potential of aromatic amine and nitro compounds. Semi-empirical, Hartree-Fock and DFT methods were used to calculate the partial charge on exocyclic nitrogen and no significant difference was observed between drugs and mutagens. This thesis suggests that stability is an important factor in mutagenic/carcinogenic potential prediction of aromatic amine and nitro compounds, but other factors such as enzymatic properties, lipophilicity are also important to build a global prediction algorithm.
