Role of hydrophobicity on the monoamine receptor binding affinities of central nervous system drugs: a quantitative retention–activity relationships analysis using biopartitioning micellar chromatography

Biological action and activity reflect an aspect of the fundamental physicochemical properties of the bioactive compounds. As an alternative to classical QSAR studies, in this work different quantitative retention–activity relationships (QRAR) models are proposed, which are able to describe the role of hydrophobicity on the binding affinity to different brain monoamine receptors (H1-histamine, α1-noradrenergic and 5-HT2-serotonergic) of different families of psychotherapeutic drugs. The retention of compounds is measured in a biopartitioning micellar chromatography (BMC) system using Brij-35 mobile phases. The adequacy of the QRAR models developed is due to the fact that both the retention of compounds in BMC and the drug–receptor interaction are described by the same hydrophobic, electronic and steric properties of compounds. The obtained results indicate that, for structurally related compounds that present the same molecular features as the basic pharmacophore, there is a retention range in which compounds present the highest affinity to all of monoamine receptors.