Computer-aided development and use of threedimensional pharmacophore models

The explosive development of computer technology and methodologies to calculate molecular properties have increasingly made it possible to use computer techniques to aid the drug discovery process. The use of computer techniques in this context is often called computer-aided drug design (CADD), but since the development of a drug involves a large number of steps in addition to the development of a high-affinity ligand (bioavailability, toxicity and metabolism must also be taken into account as discussed in Chapter 1), a more appropriate name is computer-aided ligand design (CALD).