Jonathan Goodman and his colleagues at Cambridge University are running a solubility prediction competition.

They have published the solubilities of one hundred molecules, and ask people to predict the solubility of thirty two or more molecules.

All of the molecules are drugs or drug-like compounds, and so their solubility is critically important for their therapeutic effect. “It turns out that solubility is a very difficult property to measure precisely,” he told Chemspy.

The competition is described in: Llinàs, A., Glen, R.C., Goodman, J.M. (2008). Solubility Challenge: Can You Predict Solubilities of 32 Molecules Using a Database of 100 Reliable Measurements?. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 48(7), 1289-1303. DOI: 10.1021/ci800058v

All of the data are available (in machine-readable formats) on Goodman’s website at: http://www-jmg.ch.cam.ac.uk/data/solubility/ so anyone can enter, even if they do not subscribe to the journal. The competition is sponsored by Viagra manufacturer, Pfizer and the closing date is September 15th, 2008.

The prize?

Well, if you’re one of the best solubility predictors, you will get the opportunity to provide details of your solubility prediction models as a JCIM article and all the kudos of being an uber-predictor of solubility.

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