Construction and application of pharmacophore model of benzoylurea derivatives as β-tubulin inhibitors

Ten pharmacophore models of β-tubulin inhibitors were established from the training set of   seventeen β-tubulin inhibitors (two categories) with comformer analysis by using the Catalyst software.  The optimal pharmacophore model with two hydrophobic units and two hydrogen bond acceptor units were confirmed (RMS = 0.43, Correl = 0.98, Weight = 2.06, Config = 15.97).  This pharmacophore model is able to predict the activity of known β-tubulin inhibitors and can be further used to identify structurally diverse compounds with higher activity.