Bioinformatics Tools for Pharmaceutical Drug Product Development

8Bioinformatics and Cheminformatics Tools in Early Drug Discovery

Palak K. Parikh¹, Jignasa K. Savjani², Anuradha K. Gajjar¹ and Mahesh T. Chhabria³*

¹Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Quality Assurance, L. M. College of Pharmacy, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

²Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Institute of Pharmacy, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

³L. M. College of Pharmacy, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

Abstract

Drug discovery is an important domain of research for chemical scientists and pharmaceutical industries. However, this process encompasses several challenges of increasing cost, high time consumption, off-target delivery and a high risk of failure. The advances in bioinformatics and cheminformatics have modernized this process by integrating computational tools and contributed significantly to overcoming challenges and complexity observed at different stages of the drug discovery and development pipeline. Different computer aided drug design (CADD) approaches are employed at almost every stage of the early discovery process to identify molecules that have desirable characteristics to make acceptable drugs. The present chapter discusses various CADD approaches along with major available tools and software used in the rational designing of drugs. Thus, the main aim of present compilation is to provide an outline of different computational approaches along with their effective applications in the early drug discovery.

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