Virtual Screening Strategies in Drug Design [Estratégias de Triagem Virtual no Planejamento de Fármacos]

The development of virtual screening techniques represents a major advance in the current drug design era. Through several strategies, virtual screening is able to facilitate the selection of molecules with the desired chemical features to modulate the biological activity of the most attractive molecular targets currently available. From the simplest techniques, as the similarity search or molecular docking, to more complex strategies, including statistical methods and machine learning, the main goal of virtual screening is to improve the searching for molecules with the desired features required for becoming drug candidates, thus accelerating the continuous process of drug design. The aim of this review is to discuss the main virtual screening strategies and how they relate to the drug design process.