Research progress of virtual screening aided drug discovery

In the process of new drug discovery, the application of virtual screening can enrich active   compounds, reduce the cost of drug screening, and increase the feasibility of drug screening.  Therefore virtual screening technology has become an important approach for new drug discovery.  As virtual screening and  bioactivity screening possess different advantages, their combination can effectively promote new drug discovery.  In the present paper, the application and the trend of removal of non-drug compounds, removal of false positive compounds, pharmacophore searching, molecular docking, and molecular similarity in the process of drug   discovery are introduced in order to obtain more benefit from virtual screening strategy for new drug discovery.