Drug discovery and repositioning are important processes for the pharmaceutical industry. These processes demand a high investment in resources and are time-consuming. Several strategies have been used to address this problem, including computer-aided drug design (CADD). Among CADD approaches, it is essential to highlight virtual screening (VS), an in silico approach based on computer simulation that can select organic molecules toward the therapeutic targets of interest. The techniques applied by VS are based on the structure of ligands (LBVS), receptors (SBVS), or fragments (FBVS). Regardless of the type of VS to be applied, they can be divided into categories depending on the used algorithms: similarity-based, quantitative, machine learning, meta-heuristics, and other algorithms. Each category has its objectives, advantages, and disadvantages. This review presents an overview of the algorithms used in VS, describing them and showing their use in drug design and their contribution to the drug development process.

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Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative condition characterized by progressive memory loss and other affected cognitive functions. Pharmacological therapy of AD relies on inhibitors of the enzymes acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), offering only a palliative effect and being incapable of stopping or reversing the neurodegenerative process. However, recent studies have shown that inhibiting the enzyme β-secretase 1 (BACE-1) may be able to stop neurodegeneration, making it a promising target. Considering these three enzymatic targets, it becomes feasible to apply computational techniques to guide the identification and planning of molecules capable of binding to all of them. After virtually screening 2119 molecules from a library, 13 hybrids were built and further screened by triple pharmacophoric model, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics (t = 200 ns). The selected hybrid G meets all stereo-electronic requirements to bind to AChE, BChE, and BACE-1 and offers a promising structure for future synthesis, enzymatic testing, and validation.

O constante desenvolvimento tecnológico exige dos desenvolvedores de aplicações o aprimo-ramento de suas técnicas para a criação de soluções. Neste contexto, a usabilidade de software, caracteriza-se como uma das maiores preocupações em todo o processo de desenvolvimento. O intuito é prover, ao usuário final, diversos benefícios, tais como: facilidade de uso, agilidade e minimização de erros. Como auxilio para se obter um processo que possibilite avaliar a usabili-dade de uma determinada aplicação, este trabalho define uma técnica baseada em métodos fuzzy, cujo objetivo é validar a usabilidade do software por meio da avaliação de conjunto de dados providos de pesquisas realizadas junto aos usuários do software selecionado para análi-se. Como resultado, espera-se agilizar o desenvolvimento e minimizar a quantidade de erros inseridos no produto ao longo de sua elaboração.Palavras-Chave: Engenharia de Software, Usabilidade, Lógica Fuzzy.The constant technological development requires the application developers to improve its techniques for creating solutions. In this context, software usability, is characterized as a major concern throughout the development process. The aim is to provide to the end user several ben-efits such as: ease of use, speed and error minimization. As an aid to obtain a process which enables it to evaluate the usability of a particular application, this paper defines a technique based on fuzzy methods, whose purpose is to validate the usability of software through the provided data set of evaluation research conducted with users of the software selects for analy-sis. As a result, it is expected to expedite the development and minimize the amount of errors inserted in the product throughout its development.Keywords: Software Engineering, Usability, Fuzzy Logic. ResumoAbstract 1 CEFET-MG -Campus Divinópolis; alissonmarques@gmail.com.