What to expect from rational drug design.
For more than 20 years, rational methods of drug design have belonged to the methodological core of drug development. Rational drug design based on structural knowledge of protein targets and on computational modelling of drug-target interaction holds out the promise of a predictable development process for highly innovative drugs. Still, it remains a challenge to make the available structural information fruitful for lead design. As a consequence, rational design is becoming increasingly interwoven with high-throughput screening. In addition, the relationship to the emerging systems-oriented approaches has yet to be specified.