Hans-Joachim Böhm & Gisbert Schneider 
Protein-Ligand Interactions 
From Molecular Recognition to Drug Design

The lock-and-key principle formulated by Emil Fischer as early as the end of the 19th century has still not lost any of its significance for the life sciences. The basic aspects of ligand-protein interaction may be summarized under the term ‘molecular recognition’ and concern the specificity as well as stability of ligand binding.
Molecular recognition is thus a central topic in the development of active substances, since stability and specificity determine whether a substance can be used as a drug. Nowadays, computer-aided prediction and intelligent molecular design make a large contribution to the constant search for, e. g., improved enzyme inhibitors, and new concepts such as that of pharmacophores are being developed.
An up-to-date presentation of an eternally young topic, this book is an indispensable information source for chemists, biochemists and pharmacologists dealing with the binding of ligands to proteins.

Table of Content

Prologue
Prediction of non-bonded interactions in drug design
Introduction to molecular recognition models
Experimental approaches to determine the thermodynamics of protein-ligand interactions
The biophore concept
Receptor-ligand interaction
Hydrogen bonds in protein-ligand complexes
Principles of enzyme inhibitor design
Tailoring protein scaffolds for ligand binding
Small molecule screening on chemical microarrays