Background

When you read scientific papers dealing with new molecules with pharmaceutical potential, chances are you will find phrases like “Lipinski’s rule of five”, “drug likeness parameters” or “drug likeness prediction”. Drug likeness parameters are important indicators whether some molecule possesses suitable absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) properties or not. In other words, the values of certain parameters show to what extent some molecule is similar to molecules with suitable ADME properties.

The most frequently used drug likeness parameters are the ones used by Lipinski et al. In their famous study [1], they have performed a statistical analysis of around 2200 drugs from the World Drug Index. The study revealed the reference values of selected parameters, which newly designed molecules should have. This rule is known as the “Lipinski’s rule of five”, or the “Pfeizer’s rule”. Further studies have identified other relevant drug likeness parameters. The most popular can be calculated by using the tool on this page. TPSA stands for the “topological polar surface area” [2]. Nice review about drug likeness parameters can be found in the article by Gisbert Schneider [3]

The tool on this page was made with the help of RDKit, thanks to the fact that the developers of this great python library included practically all relevant drug-likeness descriptors.

References:

[1] Lipinski CA, Lombardo F, Dominy BW. et al. Experimental and computational approaches to estimate solubility and permeability in drug discovery and development settings. Adv Drug Delivery Rev. 1997;23:3–25
[2] Ertl P, Rohde B, Selzer P. Fast Calculation of Molecular Polar Surface Area as a Sum of Fragment-Based Contributions and Its Application to the Prediction of Drug Transport Properties. J. Med. Chem. 2000; 43:3714–3717
[3] Schneider, Gisbert. “Prediction of drug-like properties.” Madame Curie Bioscience Database [Internet]. Landes Bioscience, 2013.