Virtual Screening: An Overview on Methods and Applications

Virtual screening, or VS, is emerging as a valuable tool in discovering new candidate inhibitors for many biologically relevant targets including the many chemotherapeutic targets that play key roles in cell signaling pathways. However, despite the great advances made in the field thus far, VS is still in constant development with a relatively low success rate that needs to be improved by parallel experimental validation methods. This chapter reviews the recent advances in VS, focusing on the range and type of computational methods and their successful applications in drug discovery. The chapter also discusses both the advantages and limitations of the various techniques used in VS and outlines a number of future directions in which the field may progress. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-491-2.ch002