The effects of the structural features of some 4,5-dichloroimidazolyl-1,4-dihydropyridine on their calcium channel antagonist activity have been studied using molecular modeling and quantitative structure activity-relationship analysis. Both symmetrical and asymmetrical dihydropyridine derivatives were used. AM1 semi-empirical quantum chemical calculation was used to find the optimum 3-D geometry of the molecules. Four different sets of descriptors, including chemical, topological, quantum chemical and substituent constant, were then calculated for each molecule. For each set of descriptors, the best multilinear QSAR equations were obtained by the stepwise variable selection method using leave-one-out cross-validation as selection criterion. Separate QSAR models were first obtained for symmetrical and asymmetrical derivatives, after which a general model was proposed for the entire set of molecules. This model has root mean square error of 0.45 and reproduces more than 82% of the variances in the calcium channel antagonist activity data. The sum of the negative charges, the energy of the highest occupied molecular orbital, molecular volume and the least negative charge were identified as the most significant descriptors.

Keywords: QSAR, Molecular modeling, Dihydropyridine, Calcium channel antagonist