ABSTRACT
Chemoprevention is a rapidly expanding area in contemporary cancer research that arose from chemical carcinogenesis studies indicating the ability of several classes of compounds to suppress the in vivo development of chemically induced tumors in experimental animals. These compounds were defined as carcinogenesis inhibitors and were classified according to their possible mechanism of action into either blocking or suppressive agents. Quantitative structure-activity relationships were developed for a series of 111 retinoids having modified terminal groups, conformationally restricted and nonrestricted polyenic side chains, and various ring moieties. The predictive potential of these equations was checked on several test series, including 34 different randomly chosen retinoids. The Minimum Topological Differences parameter makes a significant contribution to predicting the biological activity of the investigated compounds. Some hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of action of retinoids in promoting differentiation, as well as the nature and the possible structure of the receptor described by the equations, were made.
