VIRTUAL SCREENING STATEGIES IN DRUG DISCOVERY - A BRIEF OVERVIEW

Abstract

Computer-aided drug design has now become a compulsory tool in the drug discovery and development process. It uses computational approaches to discover, develop, and analyze drugs in order to identify potential compounds with expected biological activities. In the first part, this review provides a comprehensive introduction of the virtual screening technique, knowledge and advances in both structure-based virtual screening and ligand-based virtual screening strategies. In the second part, recent database of compounds provided worldwide and drug-like parameters which are helpful in supporting for the virtual screening process will be discussed. This information will provide a good platform to estimate the advance of applying these techniques in the new drug-lead identification and optimization.