Estimation of aqueous solubility in drug design

The solubility of drugs in water is of central importance in the process of drug discovery and development from molecular design to pharmaceutical formulation and biopharmacy. The ability to estimate the aqueous solubility and other properties of a promising lead compound affecting its pharmacokinetics is a prerequisite to rational drug design, although it has received much less attention than the prediction of drug-receptor interactions. In this review, methods for the estimation of aqueous solubility of organic compounds are described and limited to approaches, which might be used in the early stage of drug design and development.