Molecular descriptors and methods for ligand based virtual high throughput screening in drug discovery

Abstract

The aim of virtual high throughput screening is the identification of biologically relevant molecules amongst either tangible or virtual (large) collections of compounds. Amongst the various virtual screening approaches, those that are ligand based are becoming very popular due to the possibility to screen millions of molecules in a timely way. Descriptors and methods are briefly introduced and reviewed with more emphasis for those approaches that are based on fingerprint descriptors and that seems to be more utilized during the drug discovery process.