TeachOpenCADD

Open source data and software are increasingly generated, developed and used in computer-aided drug design (CADD). This development allows to build modular pipelines for reproducible and reusable research as well as to explore and contribute to open software code. While code and usage of such software is usually well documented, its full potential for CADD projects often remains unreached, especially for beginners, due to the lack of application examples combining different toolkits.

TeachOpenCADD is a teaching platform offering tutorials on central topics in cheminformatics and structural bioinformatics. The tutorials contain theoretical background and practical implementations using open source data and software. Implementations are available in two formats: On the one hand, interactive Jupyter notebooks demonstrate how to set up code-based pipelines (Python). On the other hand, the same topics are transformed into KNIME workflows, an alternative to code-based workflows. Here, an intuitive, drag-and-drop style graphical interface is used to string together pre-implemented code units (nodes) with standardized functionalities.

TeachOpenCADD is suitable for self-study training and classroom teaching, but can also serve as a starting point in research projects. The platform is freely available on GitHub and open to contributions from the community.

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