title: Structural biology and bioinformatics in drug design: opportunities and challenges for target identification and lead discovery.
abstract: Impressive progress in genome sequencing, protein expression and high-throughput crystallography and NMR has radically transformed the opportunities to use protein three-dimensional structures to accelerate drug discovery, but the quantity and complexity of the data have ensured a central place for informatics. Structural biology and bioinformatics have assisted in lead optimization and target identification where they have well established roles; they can now contribute to lead discovery, exploiting high-throughput methods of structure determination that provide powerful approaches to screening of fragment binding.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge 80 Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1GA, UK. tom@cryst.bioc.cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Tom L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Blundell
authors.forename: Bancinyane L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Sibanda
authors.forename: Rinaldo Wander
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Montalvão
authors.forename: Suzanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brewerton
authors.forename: Vijayalakshmi
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Chelliah
authors.forename: Catherine L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Worth
authors.forename: Nicholas J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Harmer
authors.forename: Owen
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Davies
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Burke
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology; D015195:Drug Design; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical; D006801:Humans; D011487:Protein Conformation; D013379:Substrate Specificity