GAMESS as a free quantum-mechanical platform for drug research
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Updated: May 17, 2026

Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship, Activity Prediction, and Molecular Dynamics of Non-nucleotide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors
Published on: May 9, 2025
Yuri Alexeev1, Michael P Mazanetz, Osamu Ichihara
1Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Building 240, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
Abstract:
Driven by a steady improvement of computational hardware and significant progress in ab initio method development, quantum-mechanical approaches can now be applied to large biochemical systems and drug design. We review the methods implemented in GAMESS, which are suitable to calculate large biochemical systems. An emphasis is put on the fragment molecular orbital method (FMO) and quantum mechanics interfaced with molecular mechanics (QM/MM). The use of FMO in the protein-ligand binding, structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies, fragment- and structure-based drug design (FBDD/SBDD) is discussed in detail.
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