page_title: Drug design
section_title: Types
hierarchical_section_title: Drug design / Types
caption_attribution_description: English: Schematic diagram of the drug discovery cycle.
context_page_description: Drug design, often referred to as rational drug design or simply rational design, is the inventive process of finding new medications based on the knowledge of a biological target. The drug is most commonly an organic small molecule that activates or inhibits the function of a biomolecule such as a protein, which in turn results in a therapeutic benefit to the patient. In the most basic sense, drug design involves the design of molecules that are complementary in shape and charge to the biomolecular target with which they interact and therefore will bind to it. Drug design frequently but not necessarily relies on computer modeling techniques. This type of modeling is sometimes referred to as computer-aided drug design. Finally, drug design that relies on the knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of the biomolecular target is known as structure-based drug design. In addition to small molecules, biopharmaceuticals including peptides and especially therapeutic antibodies are an increasingly important class of drugs and computational methods for improving the affinity, selectivity, and stability of these protein-based therapeutics have also been developed.
context_section_description: There are two major types of drug design.  The first is referred to as ligand-based drug design and the second, structure-based drug design.
caption: Drug discovery cycle highlighting both ligand-based (indirect) and structure-based (direct) drug design strategies.
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