Suitability of MMGBSA for the selection of correct ligand binding modes from docking results

The estimation of the correct binding mode and affinity of a ligand into a target protein using computational methods is challenging. However, docking can introduce poses from which the correct binding mode could be identified using other methods. Here, we analyzed the reliability of binding energy estimation using the molecular mechanics‐generalized Born surface area (MMGBSA) method without and with energy minimization to identify the likely ligand binding modes within docking results. MMGBSA workflow (a) outperformed docking in recognizing the correct binding modes of androgen receptor ligands and (b) improved the correlation coefficient of computational and experimental results of rescor…