Drug Binding Free Energies with Implicit Solvent Methods

1）采用标准隐式溶剂模型，结合原子生物分子模型和现代采样技术，并试图直接评估一系列蛋白质-配体系统中配体结合的绝对自由能。2)开发统计方法，以确定各种采样技术中的哪些（如果有的话）能够真正产生一系列相关系统的结合复合物的精确自由能。3)使用这些结果，以确定隐含的溶剂和原子的生物分子模型，可以改善，以更好地适应各种各样的配体蛋白质复合物的结合能和结构的方式。这项研究对合理的药物设计，从而对所有的医学都有重要的影响。如果生物分子模拟的预测能力能够显著提高，并且这些方法的效率提高，则将导致药物开发的总成本显著降低。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): 1) To take standard implicit solvent models, combined with atomistic biomolecular models and modern sampling techniques, and attempt to directly evaluate the absolute free energy of ligand binding in a range of protein-ligand systems. 2) To develop statistical methods to identify of which, if any, of various sampling techniques are able to truly able to yield precise free energies of binding complexes for a range of relevant systems. 3) To use these results to identify ways in which the implicit solvent and atomistic biomolecular models can be improved to better fit the binding energies and structures for a wide variety of ligand protein complexes. This research has important consequences for rational drug design, and consequently all of medicine. If the predictive ability of biomolecular simulations can be significantly improved, and the efficiency of these methods increased, it will result in significantly lowered total costs of drug development.