Molecular characteristics of several drugs evaluated from solvent/water partition measurements: Solvation parameters and intramolecular hydrogen bond indicator

•Drug experimental partition in solvent/water (octanol, chloroform, toluene, dodecane).•Derivation of drug solvation parameters from partition values.•Derivation of intramolecular hydrogen bond indicator from partition parameters.•Estimation of toluene/water partition by means of Minnesota's solvation model (SMD).•Estimation of toluene/water partition by means of Abraham's partition equation. A wide set of well-known drugs, most of them included in the Abraham´s reference database, covering a wide variety of chemical structures and therapeutical functionalities were chosen in order to determine some molecular properties from solvent/water partition measurements. Partition data from aqueous solutions and four different solvents (n-dodecane, toluene, chloroform and n-octanol) were measured and reported. From them, Abraham´s molecular descriptors of selected compounds (A, B and S, accounting for hydrogen bond donor, hydrogen bond acceptor and dipolarity/polaritzability, respectively) were estimated. A and B values derived from the experimental measurements strongly agree with the tabulated ones showing the suitability of the used procedure to achieve reliable values for new molecules. However, obtained S values differ from those previously reported for several compounds. Moreover, values for a new indicator of the propensity to form intramolecular hydrogen bonds (Δlog Poct-tol) were estimated from the experimental data and also calculated according to both, the Abraham´s model and the molecular structures (SMD). The quality of both series of calculated descriptors was evaluated by contrast with the experimental values and satisfactory results were obtained in both instances. Thus, the Abraham´s way is useful when molecular descriptors are available but very good estimations can be achieved by SMD, which only requires the drug´s molecular structure. [Display omitted]