Pharmacophore

A pharmacophore is the one part or consists of those characteristics of a molecule which are responsible for the pharmacological effect. In this case, all the steric and electronic properties that are necessary to allow for interaction with a particular biological target (Target ), and trigger a biological response or block considered.

In modern computational chemistry, pharmacophores play an important role. With the help Quantitative structure-activity relationships, it is possible to derive from the structure of drugs and their pharmacological properties pharmacophores. On the other hand, databases can be searched for potentially effective drugs based on known pharmacophores.

The term of the pharmacophore is historically often attributed to Paul Ehrlich, without having used it ever proven. In his 1909 published article " About the current state of chemotherapy," he described how, some years before John Newport Langley, some vague features of a pharmacophore, which are responsible for a ligand -receptor interaction. The actual concept of the pharmacophore was formulated by Lemont B. Kier for the first time in 1967 and 1971 for the first time used as a term.