[Three dimensional structure-activity relationships].

Among the indirect drug design approaches, the 3D QSAR methods have been of great importance. They now belong to the most attractive and effective modelling tools of modern drug research. In this review, three major topics will be covered. The first focuses on the conformational analysis, in the second part the DIstance COmparison (DISCO) strategy will be discussed, and in the last part the philosophy of the Comparative Molecular Field Analysis (CoMFA) will be briefly described and illustrated.