Strategies for Drug Design-A Review

Drugs are essential for human survival. Drug molecules can bind the active site of the target proteins and there by disrupt the action of the target protein. A number of approaches are currently available to design drugs which make use of optimization algorithms that give quick result. Optimization algorithms help to select the best solution (drug molecule) from the set of alternatives. This article discusses and compares six approaches for designing drugs that can reduce the time and cost of the early drug discovery process. Each of these approaches uses different optimization techniques. The approaches discussed here are based on Genetic Algorithm, its variants, Particle Swarm Optimization and Multiobjective Simulated Annealing.