A QSAR study of radical scavenging antioxidant activity of a series of flavonoids using DFT based quantum chemical descriptors--the importance of group frontier electron density.

In a pursuit of electronic level understanding of the antioxidant activity of a series of flavonoids, quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies have been carried out using density functional theory (DFT) based quantum chemical descriptors. The best QSAR model have been selected for which the computed square correlation coefficient r(2) = 0.937 and cross-validated squared correlation coefficient q(2) =0.916. The QSAR model indicates that hardness (η), group electrophilic frontier electron density (F(E)(A)) and group philicity (ω(B)(+)) of individual molecules are responsible for in vitro biological activity. To the best our knowledge, the group electrophilic frontier electron density (F(E)(A)) has been used for the first time to explain the radical scavenging activity (RSA) of flavonoids. The excellent correlation between the RSA and the above mentioned DFT based descriptors lead us to predict new antioxidants having very good antioxidant activity.