Recent developments in drug design: computational chemistry and models of the interaction of ligands with receptors

Recent articles and advertisements suggest that drug design is within the reach of any chemically oriented scientist who obtains the latest three-dimensional computer graphics programs for his personal computer. This sort of "rational" drug design has however had limited success. When it has been successful, it has required the rigorous application of computational chemistry. Bowen et al. in their accompanying paper provide a summary of a number of approaches and the assumptions involved. The papers by McDonnell et al. and Hendry describe two different approaches: utilizing molecular genetics to test the effective interaction in vitro of ligands with their receptors and utilizing the model structure of DNA as a blueprint for the structure of the intracellular targets of drugs.