Virtual Screening for Drug Discovery; Hurdles to Overcome for Better Drug Prediction

Abstract

he cost to develop a new drug that would enter the market is found to be $2.6 billion, and only a percentage of less than 12% of new drug candidates that would enter clinical trials would obtain FDA approval as a prescriptible medication. 1 The rational molecular design could potentially change this drastically and save a lot of money and time by eliminating candidates that fail in the process of only selecting candidates with a chance of being ultimately successful. Virtual screening is one such method where computational chemistry simulations are used to screen molecules instead of using conventional biochemical assays.