[Computer-Aided Drug Design: An Alternative to Animal Testing in the Pharmacological Screening]

By means of graphical and numerical simulation of the binding of a biological key molecule to a receptor, Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) allows the semi-quantitative prediction of the activity of potential drug molecules. New drugs can be tailor-made for a specific receptor without animal testing; substances with little or no pharmacological activity are unambiguously identified and removed from the evaluation process before preclinical "in vivo" tests become necessary. Two methods, direct CADD and Receptor Mapping are presented.