Figure 4.

Tau pharmacophore-based screening of drug targets. Shown are two procedures of pharmacophore development that could be encountered when starting a pharmacophore-based virtual screening of tau: (a) a ligand-based 3D pharmacophore with a known ligand structure and ligand fingerprints; and (b) a 3D pharmacophore model with a known protein structure. In both cases, pharmacophore query can be used to identify chemical features, such as H-bond acceptors and H-bond donors, and anionic (−), cationic (+), hydrophobic (H) and aromatic (R) groups for virtual screening. (c) Results are shown from virtual searches of chemical databases using preferential software algorithms to find the best reliable ligand sets with structure similarity targets for docking.