[New strategies in the search for drugs]

The development of selective, reliable and safe drugs turns out to be a very expensive and time consuming task. Supported by computer graphics, structural chemistry provides tools for the understanding of the drug-receptor interaction on a molecular level. As a prerequisite for these investigations, the structures of both the biochemical receptor and the drug must be experimentally determined or numerically simulated. Subsequently, the three dimensional geometry of the drug molecule can be modified to enable an optimal fit together with a high selectivity for the binding to the active site of the target receptor. Even without knowledge of the structure of the receptor, a particular class of compounds can be optimized by a systematic comparison of drug molecules which allows the elucidation of the pharmacophore pattern relevant to a certain action.