Artificial neural networks: theoretical background and pharmaceutical applications: a review

In recent times, there has been a growing interest in artificial neural networks, which are a rough simulation of the information processing ability of the human brain, as modern and vastly sophisticated computational techniques. This interest has also been reflected in the pharmaceutical sciences. This paper presents a review of articles on the subject of the application of neural networks as effective tools assisting the solution of various problems in science and the pharmaceutical industry, especially those characterized by multivariate and nonlinear dependencies. After a short description of theoretical background and practical basics concerning the computations performed by means of neural networks, the most important pharmaceutical applications of neural networks, with suitable references, are demonstrated. The huge role played by neural networks in pharmaceutical analysis, pharmaceutical technology, and searching for the relationships between the chemical structure and the properties of newly synthesized compounds as candidates for drugs is discussed.