Computer-Assisted Drug Virtual Screening Based on the Natural Product Databases
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Published on: June 28, 2019
Baoyu Yang1, Jing Mao1, Bing Gao2
1Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, The School of Life Science, Liaoning University, Shenyang 110036, China.
Background:
Computer-assisted drug virtual screening models the process of drug screening through computer simulation technology, by docking small molecules in some of the databases to a certain protein target. There are many kinds of small molecules databases available for drug screening, including natural product databases.
Methods:
Plants have been used as a source of medication for millennia. About 80% of drugs were either natural products or related analogues by 1990, and many natural products are biologically active and have favorable absorption, distribution, metabolization, excretion, and toxicology.
Results:
In this paper, we review the natural product databases' contributions to drug discovery based on virtual screening, focusing particularly on the introductions of plant natural products, microorganism natural product, Traditional Chinese medicine databases, as well as natural product toxicity prediction databases.
Conclusion:
We highlight the applications of these databases in many fields of virtual screening, and attempt to forecast the importance of the natural product database in next-generation drug discovery.
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