A method of searching one or more ligand-candidate compounds to a target
biopolymer from a three-dimensional structure database, which comprises
the steps of: (i) the first step of assigning hydrogen-bonding category
numbers, information for calculating force-field energy, and information
for generating conformations to two or more trial compounds in addition to
atomic three-dimensional coordinates thereof; (ii) the second step of
preparing physicochemical information about a ligand-binding region and
one or more dummy atoms based on the three-dimensional atomic coordinates
of the target biopolymer; (iii) the third step of estimating the most
stable docking structure, wherein said step further comprises the steps of
examining possible docking structures by docking a trial compound to the
biopolymer while varying conformations of the trial compound, evaluating
interaction energies between the target biopolymer and the trial compound,
and repeating structure optimization; (iv) the fourth step of deciding
whether or not the trial compound should be adopted as a ligand-candidate
compound based on given criteria including the interaction energy values
between the target biopolymer and the trial compound in the most stable
docking structure estimated according to the step (iii); and (v) the fifth
step of repeating the step (iii) and the step (iv) for all of the trial
compounds.