The Solvated Interaction Energy Method for Scoring Binding Affinities

The solvated interaction energy (SIE) is an end-point, physics-based scoring function for predicting ligand-binding affinities. It supplements the force-field interaction energy with the desolvation cost of binding. Parameters such as the solute dielectric constant, Born radii, a cavity term and an overall scaling coefficient and additive constant have been previously calibrated against a training set of 99 protein–ligand complexes. We describe the application of the method to estimating binding free energies from molecular dynamics trajectories of protein–ligand binding complexes.