The Semiempirical Quantum Mechanical Scoring Function for In Silico Drug Design.

This Minireview discusses the latest developments in modern quantum mechanics (QM)-based computer-aided drug design, especially using semiempirical QM (SQM) methods. It first tackles biochemical and biophysical quantities and the approaches to their measurements. Protein-ligand affinities are determined mostly by noncovalent interactions. The text thus illustrates how these can be accurately treated with SQM methods. Next, a construction of a modern SQM-based scoring function is presented and its applications listed. In summary, SQM-based scoring is a promising modern efficient strategy to be exploited in computer-aided drug design.