Recent Methodologies for the Estimation of N-Octanol / Water Partition Coefficients and their Use in the Prediction of Membrane Transport Properties of Drugs

The lipophilicity of drug molecules (represented as the logarithm of the n-octanol / water partition coefficient) often strongly correlates with their pharmacological and toxic activities. It is therefore, not surprising that there is considerable interest in developing mathematical models capable to accurately predict their value for new drug candidates. In this review, current major approaches for estimating partition coefficients are described and some of their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Recent uses of these partition coefficient algorithms in the development of membrane transport models are also discussed.