“…The PLS method works well when there are several noisy and inter-correlated descriptors, and also allows multiple responses to be modelled simultaneously (Eriksson & Johansson, 1996). The usefulness of PLS in (Q)SAR studies, especially when the descriptors are highly correlated and numerous, has been proven by several researchers (Cramer, Bunce, Patterson, & Frank, 1988;Dunn, Wold, Edlund, Hellberg, & Gasteiger, 1984;Eriksson, Gottfries, Johansson, & Wold, 2004;Gu, et al, 2012;Luco, 1999;Luco & Ferretti, 1997). However, this method can only be used for the solution of linear regression problems.…”