Introducing drug discovery and design
The process of drug discovery and design centers around the identification of biological targets. A disease may demonstrate multiple clinical characteristics, and the goal of the drug compound is to modulate the behavior of the biological entity (such as proteins and genes) that can change the clinical behavior of the disease. This is referred to as the target being druggable. The compounds do this by binding to the target and altering its molecular structure. As a result, understanding the physical structure of the molecule is extremely critical in the drug discovery and design process. Cheminformatics is a branch of science that studies the physical structure as well as the properties of molecules, such as absorption, distribution, metabolism, and extraction (ADME). Targets are screened against millions of compounds based on these properties to find the candidates that can be taken through the steps of clinical research and clinical trials. This...
