Pharmacophore Modeling Methods in Focused Library Selection -Applications in the Context of a New Classification Scheme

A pharmacophore is a model which represents the key physico-chemical interactions that mediate biological activity. There is a long history of using pharmacophore modeling methods to select subsets of compounds, focused towards a specific target of interest. This paper will review existing computational methods for deriving and comparing pharmacophore models. We outline a new classification of pharmacophore methods based on the abstraction of the underlying chemical interactions which embody a pharmacophore, and the methods available to quantitatively compare them. Within the context of this classification, example studies, using specific pharmacophore modeling methods for focused library selection, will be discussed.