The thermodynamics of guest complexation to octa-acid and tetra--methyl octa-acid: reference data for the sixth statistical assessment of modeling of proteins and ligands (SAMPL6).

Although computer-aided drug design has greatly improved over time, its application in the pharmaceutical industry is still limited by the accuracy of association constant predictions. Towards improving this situation, the Statistical Assessment of the Modeling of Proteins and Ligands (SAMPL) is a series of community-wide blind challenges aimed to advance computational techniques as standard predictive tools in rational drug design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAMPL_Challenge). As an empirical contribution to the sixth assessment (SAMPL6), we report here the association constant ( ) and thermodynamic parameters (∆, ∆, -∆) of eight guests (-) binding to two subtly different hosts ( and ) using ITC. Both hosts contain a unique, well-defined binding pocket capable of storing guests with up to ten non-hydrogen atoms, whilst the selection of amphiphilic guests contain a range of saturated and unsaturated substituents from C6 to C10. The thermodynamic data from this study will allow the challenge participants of SAMPL6 to test the accuracy of their computational protocols for calculating host-guest affinities.