Progress in Free Energy Perturbation: Options for Evolving Fragments

One of the remaining bottlenecks in fragment-based drug design (FBDD) is the initial exploration and optimization of the identified hit fragments. There is a growing interest in computational approaches that can guide these efforts by predicting the binding affinity of newly designed analogues. Among others, alchemical free energy (AFE) calculations promise high accuracy at a computational cost that allows their application during lead optimization campaigns. In this review, we discuss how AFE could have a strong impact in fragment evolution, and we raise awareness on the challenges that could be encountered applying this methodology in FBDD studies.