Acknowledgements This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No 30600784) and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, SIMM0709Q.N-18 (Grant No OTG602R012) We thank Dr David L BURK and Dr Prof Albert M BER-GHUIS (McGill University, Canada) for reading the manuscript and for helpful discussions. We thank ChemAxon Inc for providing the JAVA software packages JChem and Marvin.
Aim: The search for molecules whose bioactivities are similar to those of given compounds or to optimize the initial lead compounds from high throughput screening has attracted increasing interest in recent years. Ou...