A novel cheminformatics-based approach has been employed to investigate a set of polymer coating materials
designed to mitigate the accumulation of marine biofouling on surfaces immersed in the sea. Specifically, a set of 27 nontoxic,
amphiphilic polysiloxane-based polymer coatings was synthesized using a combinatorial, high-throughput approach and
characterized for fouling-release (FR) activity toward a number of relevant marine fouling organisms, including bacteria,
microalgae, and adult barnacles. In order to model these complex systems adequately, a new computational technique was used
in which all investigated polymer-based coating materials were considered as mixture systems comprising several compositional
variables at a range of concentrations. By applying a combination of methodologies for mixture systems and a quantitative
structure?activity relationship approach (QSAR), seven unique QSAR models were developed that were able to successfully
predict the desired FR properties. Furthermore, the developed models identified several significant descriptors responsible for FR
activity of investigated polymer-based coating materials, with correlation coefficients ranging from rtest2 = 0.63 to 0.94. The
computational models derived from this study may serve as a powerful set of tools to predict optimal combinations of source
components to produce amphiphilic polysiloxane-based coating systems with effective, broad-spectrum FR properties.