CORRESPONDENCE FACTOR-ANALYSIS OF STEROID LIBRARIES

The receptor binding of a library of 187 steroids to five steroid horm one receptors (estrogen, progestin, androgen, mineralocorticoid, and g lucocorticoid) has been analyzed by correspondence factor analysis (CF A) in order to illustrate how the method could be used to derive struc ture-activity-relationships from much larger libraries. CFA is a carto graphic multivariate technique that provides objective distribution ma ps of the data after reduction and filtering of redundant information and noise. The key to the analysis of very complex data tables is the formation of barycenters (steroids with one or more common structural fragments) that can be introduced into CFA analyses used as mathematic al models. This is possible in CFA because the method uses chi(2)-metr ics and is based an the distributional equivalence of the rows and col umns of the transformed data matrix. We have thus demonstrated in pure ly objective statistical terms, the general conclusions on the specifi city of various functional and other groups derived from prior analyse s by expert intuition and reasoning. A finer analysis was made of a se ries of A-ring phenols showing the high degree of glucocorticoid recep tor and progesterone receptor binding that can be generated by certain C-11-substitutions despite the presence of the the phenolic A-ring ch aracteristic of estrogen receptor-specific binding.