Using Consensus Docking to Improve the Effectiveness of Molecular Docking Programs

Molecular docking programs are widely used in modeling protein-ligand interactions during drug discovery. These programs computationally predict the binding pose and affinity for the interaction and can rate ligand conformations using a scoring function, but they can at times produce inaccurate predictions. One method to improve the use of these programs is consensus docking. Consensus docking evaluates protein-ligand binding using multiple docking programs and/or scoring functions to provide a more accurate prediction of the complex. This presentation will provide an overview of the different forms of consensus docking, giving the benefits as well as the drawbacks to this approach. We will also compare the effectiveness of these methods to a traditional molecular docking approach and present areas we have identified for the potential improvement of consensus docking.