Over the past  three decades there have been new developments in therapeutic drug design. In Rational Drug Design: Methods and Protocols,  expert researchers in the field detail many of the methodologies used to study rational drug design. These include methods such as virtual screening of chemical hits, rational lead discovery by high throughput screening, combinatorial and fragment based lead generation, peptide based drug discovery, and animal models of lead validation. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology(tm) series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and key tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls.   Authoritative and practical, Rational Drug Design: Methods and Protocols seeks to aid scientists in the further study of rational drug design and future drug discovery.