To cite this article: Khiat, A. d Boulanger, Y . (1998) Identification of the motilide pharmacophores using quantitative structure activity relationships. 1. Peptide Res. 52, 321-328. Abstract: Erythromycin A and some derivatives have been shown to act as agonists at the motilin receptor site (motilides) and a structural similarity between these molecules and the N-terminal fragment of motilin has been proposed. Conformational analysis and three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship (3D-QSAR) methods have been used t o determine the homology between a series of erythromycin A derivatives and motilin 1-10, A total of 18 compounds has been studied to correlate the gastrointestinal motor stimulating (GMS) activity with the structure-related parameters determined by 3D-QSAR. Two models with good predictive power of the GMS activity are presented, leading to the prediction of motilin 1-10 activity. The models are consistent with the majority of the data available. The most significant parameters for GMS activity are a favorable dispersion interaction from the quaternary ammonium group of the desosamine ring. In motilin 1-10, the aromatic side chains of Phe' and Tyr7 seem to play the same role as the quaternary ammonium group in models 1 and 2, respectively. Some hydroxyl groups of erythromycin A derivatives and hydrophobic groups of the Val2 and He4 side chains of motilin also contribute to the GMS activity. The experimental GMS activities measured are in good agreement with the predicted values, with correlation coefficient values of 0.98 and 0.94 in models 1 and 2, respectively. Abbreviations: 3D-QSAR, three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationships; EM-A, erythromycin A; GMS, gastrointestinal motor stimulating; NOESY, nuclear Overhauser enhancement spectroscopy; RMSA, root mean square error based on all compounds with degrees of freedom correction; RMSP, root mean square error based on "leave-one-out" with no degrees of freedom correction; SAR, structure-activity relationships.