Pharmacophore modeling and 3D-QSAR studies of 15-hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase (15-PGDH) inhibitors

15-Hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase (15-PGDH) plays an important role in gastric ulcer healing, bone formation and dermal wound healing, encouraging several efforts to discover and optimize new inhibitors. We explored possible pharmacophoric space of 15-PGDH using four diverse sets of inhibitors. After that, GA and MLR methods have been employed to identify the optimal pharmacophore model(s) and physicochemical descriptors able to access Quantitative structure-activity relationship equation (r(2)=0.711, r((adj))(2)=0.6927, r((LOO))(2)= 0.6598). One pharmcophore model has emerged in the Quantitative structure-activity relationship equation and has been validated by ROC curve analysis and molecular docking.