Bioinformatics tools for screening of antiparasitic drugs

Curr Drug Targets. 2009 Mar;10(3):232-9. doi: 10.2174/138945009787581122.

Abstract

Drug development has become the Holy Grail of many structural bioinformatics groups. The explosion of information about protein structures, ligand-binding affinity, parasite genome projects, and biological activity of millions of molecules opened the possibility to correlate this scattered information in order to generate reliable computational models to predict the likelihood of being able to modulate a target with a small-molecule drug. Computational methods have shown their potential in drug discovery and development allied with in vitro and in vivo methodologies. The present review discusses the main bioinformatics tools available for drug discovery and development.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Antiparasitic Agents / pharmacology*
  • Computational Biology / methods
  • Computer-Aided Design
  • Databases, Factual
  • Drug Delivery Systems*
  • Drug Design*
  • Humans
  • Ligands
  • Models, Molecular
  • Parasites / drug effects
  • Proteins / metabolism

Substances

  • Antiparasitic Agents
  • Ligands
  • Proteins