Blind prediction of toluene/water partition coefficients using COSMO-RS: results from the SAMPL9 challenge

Accurately predicting partition coefficients log P is crucial for reducing costs and accelerating drug design as it provides valuable information about the bioavailability, pharmacokinetics, and toxicity of different drug candidates. However, the performance of the existing methods is ambiguous, making it unclear whether these methods can be effectively utilized in drug discovery. To assess the performance of these methods, a series of SAMPL challenges have been conducted over the past few years, aiming to enable the development and validation of predictive models. In this study, we present two independent contributions to the SAMPL9 challenge for predicting the toluene/water partition coefficients for 16 molecules. Both submissions, A and B, use the COSMO-RS approach, albeit in slightly different procedures, to compute the transfer free energies from water to toluene of the molecules presented in the challenge, and consequently, their corresponding log P values. Based on the results, COSMO-RS submission A achieves the top position with an R2 value of 0.93 while it ranks second in terms of root-mean-square error (RMSE) with a value of 1.23 log P units. COSMO-RS submission B achieves an R2 value of 0.83 and an RMSE value of 1.48 log P units. Following the challenge, we predict the log P values using a neural network model, which was pre-trained on COSMO-RS data achieving an R2 of 0.92 and RMSE of 1.04 log P units. Compared to previous SAMPL challenges, all contributions displayed large deviations in predicting the toluene/water partition coefficient. These large deviations emphasize that further research is needed to develop accurate and reliable methods for modeling solvent effects on small molecule transfer-free energies.

The first HyDRA challenge for computational vibrational spectroscopy

Vibrational spectroscopy in supersonic jet expansions is a powerful tool to assess molecular aggregates in close to ideal conditions for the benchmarking of quantum chemical approaches. The low temperatures achieved as well as the absence of environment effects allow for a direct comparison between computed and experimental spectra. This provides potential benchmarking data which can be revisited to hone different computational techniques, and it allows for the critical analysis of procedures under the setting of a blind challenge. In the latter case, the final result is unknown to modellers, providing an unbiased testing opportunity for quantum chemical models. In this work, we present the spectroscopic and computational results for the first HyDRA blind challenge. The latter deals with the prediction of water donor stretching vibrations in monohydrates of organic molecules. This edition features a test set of 10 systems. Experimental water donor OH vibrational wavenumbers for the vacuum-isolated monohydrates of formaldehyde, tetrahydrofuran, pyridine, tetrahydrothiophene, trifluoroethanol, methyl lactate, dimethylimidazolidinone, cyclooctanone, trifluoroacetophenone and 1-phenylcyclohexane-cis-1,2-diol are provided. The results of the challenge show promising predictive properties in both purely quantum mechanical approaches as well as regression and other machine learning strategies.

A Reactive Molecular Dynamics Study of Chlorinated Organic Compounds. Part II: A ChemTraYzer Study of Chlorinated Dibenzofuran Formation and Decomposition Processes

The front cover artwork is provided by Prof. K. Leonhard's group at RWTH Aachen University. The image shows ChemTraYzer, a virtual robot, while analyzing the reaction network related to the formation and oxidation of Chloro-Dibenzofuranes. Read the full text of the Research Article at 10.1002/cphc.202200783.

Understanding the Monomer Deuteration Effect on the Transition Temperature of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) Microgels in H2O

Obtaining deuterated micro- and nanogels is essential to characterize their architecture and determine their response to crowding using neutron scattering with contrast variation. Experimental studies have reported that deuterated microgels...

A Reactive Molecular Dynamics Study of Chlorinated Organic Compounds. Part II: A ChemTraYzer Study of Chlorinated Dibenzofuran Formation and Decomposition Processes

In our two-paper series, we first present the development of ReaxFF CHOCl parameters using the recently published ParAMS parametrization tool. In this second part, we update the reactive Molecular Dynamics - Quantum Mechanics coupling scheme ChemTraYzer and combine it with our new ReaxFF parameters from Part I to study formation and decomposition processes of chlorinated dibenzofurans. We introduce a self-learning method for recovering failed transition-state searches that improves the overall ChemTraYzer transition-state search success rate by 10 percentage points to a total of 48 %. With ChemTraYzer, we automatically find and quantify more than 500 reactions using transition state theory and DFT. Among the discovered chlorinated dibenzofuran reactions are numerous reactions that are new to the literature. In three case studies, we discuss the set of reactions that are most relevant to the dibenzofuran literature: (i) bimolecular reactions of the chlorinated-dibenzofuran precursors phenoxy radical and 1,3,5-trichlorobenzene, (ii) dibenzofuran chlorination and pyrolysis, and (iii) oxidation of chlorinated dibenzofurans.

Dicyanobenzothiadiazole Derivatives Possessing Switchable Dielectric Permittivities

Benzothiadiazoles are important electron acceptors and are frequently employed as electron-deficient components of donor-acceptor polymers. We report the effect of nitrile functionalities on the reactivity, steric hindrance, optoelectronic properties, and dielectric permittivity in dicyanobenzothioadiazole (DCNBT). Dielectric spectroscopy in the bulk and in solution assisted by DFT-calculations revealed that these molecules can be engineered to engender maximum values of the dipole moment and of dielectric permittivity due to the strong electron-withdrawing effect of the nitrile groups. The self-assembly in the bulk was investigated by X-ray scattering performed on single crystals, fibers (2D-WAXS), and thin films (GiWAXS). Combining these results, we found a switching of dielectric permittivity of the 4,7-alkylthienyl-substituted dicyanobenzothiadiazole at the transition from the liquid crystalline to the isotropic phase with values capable of competing with the best known rodlike liquid crystals.