Under the supervision of Associate Professor Dr. Sarmed H. Kathum AlKhateeb, the Dean of the College of Pharmacy-University of Baghdad…. The continuing education unit held a workshop that entitled as (Rational Computational Drug Design Approaches) that was given by Dr. Koushik Kasavajhala a senior scientist I at Schrodinger Inc. company and Assistant Professor Dr. Ayad A. Al-Hamashi, Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department. The workshop is a two-day cloud-based hands-on targeting structure-based drug designing. Participants got practical experience and in-person guidance in using the Glide and Desmond software, covering organic molecule sketching, protein selection, preparation, and screening for hit identification of molecules against therapeutic targets. The workshop was also included a brief recap of background theory for Molecular Mechanics, Molecular Docking, and Molecular Dynamics via case studies on real-time industrial projects. The Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry Faculty members and graduate students in addition to several motivated undergraduate students attended the workshop. It was a great opportunity to learn fundamental information regarding drug design and development strategies. As the attendees were exposed to cutting-edge strategies about how molecular modeling facilities help researchers to estimate the possible biological activity of the designed molecules. The molecular modeling is helping in minimizing the cost, time, and efforts to discover novel pharmacologically active molecules.
