The Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, North South University (NSU) is offering a series of approved online training courses on Computational Drug Discovery.
These programs are designed to build practical, research-oriented skills in molecular docking, molecular dynamics, and machine learning–based virtual screening for students, researchers, and professionals.
Selecting the right target protein is a critical first step in computational drug discovery. A well-chosen target increases the likelihood that virtual screening, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics simulations will yield meaningful and biologically relevant results.
This tutorial introduces practical and beginner-friendly approaches to identifying and validating target proteins. The focus is on conceptual understanding, not software-specific instructions. Future tutorials from Idgence Research will explore each method in detail with hands-on examples.
Structure-based drug discovery (SBDD) is a widely used computational approach that leverages the three-dimensional structure of biological targets to identify and optimize potential drug candidates. In this introductory tutorial, we present a real-world case study using Receptor-Interacting Protein Kinase 1 (RIPK1)—a clinically relevant target involved in inflammation, neurodegeneration, and cell death pathways.