Ezqsar: An R Package for Developing QSAR Models Directly From Structures

Background:Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) is a difficult computational chemistry approach for beginner scientists and atime consuming one for even more experienced researchers. Method and Materials:Ezqsar which is introduced here addresses both the issues. It considers important steps to have a reliable QSAR model. Besidescalculation of descriptors using CDK library, highly correlated descriptors are removed, a provided data set is divided to train andtest sets, descriptors are selected by a statistical method, statistical parameter for the model are presented and applicability domain isinvestigated. Results:Finally, the model can be applied to predict the activities for an extra set of molecules for a purpose of either lead optimization orvirtual screening. The performance is demonstrated by an example.Conclusion:The R package, ezqsar, is freely available viahttps://github.com/shamsaraj/ezqsar, and it runs on Linux and MS-Windows