StarDrop™ 8.2: Richer 3D insights without leaving your design workspace 

StarDrop 8.2 has arrived, bringing more of your 3D modelling work into the single environment you already use for design, prediction, and optimisation. 

StarDrop has always been built on one idea: tools designed by chemists, for chemists, with features intuitive enough to actually use and that earn their place in your toolbox by making decisions easier. 

Our latest release, StarDrop 8.2, holds to that, with a set of improvements to protein-ligand visualisation in the 3D area and extended access to QuanSA™ modelling (for BioPharmics™ licence holders) through the Pose Generation Interface. 

Enhanced 3D visualisations: Explore protein-ligand structures more clearly 

StarDrop’s 3D area has supported ligand-based design (eSim3D) for some time and we’ve been steadily extending it to support more structure-based workflows. The latest improvements make it a better place to explore protein-ligand structures and review docking results, so you can make design decisions without jumping between applications. 

Here’s what that looks like in practice: 

1. Protein surfaces coloured by element type underneath

This gives a more informative view of the protein environment and helps you interpret the chemical nature of a pocket more intuitively. It’s a small change in one sense, but it makes the surface more meaningful when you are trying to understand why a ligand sits where it does, or what kinds of interactions a pocket region might support. 

2. Hover detection over ribbons and atoms

To help you keep track of residues, you can now view the corresponding chain and residue information in the 3D area.  

3. Fine control over depth cueing/fog

Depth cueing fades out atoms further from view to give a sense of depth. A new slider now lets you control how strong that fade is, so you can push distant, less relevant regions back and keep your focus on the part of the structure you’re inspecting.  

4. Visualise occluded binding sites with Z-clipping

Anyone who has spent time trying to look inside a buried binding site knows how easily a good 3D view can end up getting in its own way. Z-clipping allows you to cut into the scene and inspect internal regions more clearly, making it much easier to focus on a ligand nestled into a deep binding site. 

5. Measure distances, angles & torsions between atoms

Creating clear images with measurements has always been a pain point. It’s very easy to go from “this is useful” to “this is unreadable”.  

You can now make measurements directly in StarDrop’s 3D area, and importantly, with fine control over which measurements are displayed or hidden. This makes it easy to create an informative scene, rather than a cluttered diagram full of unwanted labels. 

Taken together, these changes make the 3D area in StarDrop a more capable and usable environment for both ligand-based and structure-based design. 

Broader access to external modelling through the Pose Generation Interface 

The Pose Generation Interface (PGI) provides a flexible, vendor-agnostic way to access external docking and pose-generation methods within your StarDrop environment, whether that’s Surflex™-Dock, or third-party algorithms. 

Using PGI, prepared models can be made available to you in StarDrop, where you can submit your own compounds and explore the results yourself, without routine calculations going back and forth to the modelling team. 

In StarDrop 8.2, we have extended PGI support to include QuanSA™. Users with a BioPharmics licence can now access QuanSA binding affinity models in StarDrop and explore every returned pose next to 2D SAR, predictions, and experimental data.  

That’s a real advantage: stay flexible about methods, but keep one environment where the results actually come together. 

Usability improvements that make everyday work easier and more secure 

Alongside these headline features, this release also includes a number of enhancements that make StarDrop feel more responsive and easier to use, while keeping the underlying technology up to date and the platform secure. 

While this work isn’t always immediately visible, keeping libraries up to date and staying ahead on security is part of maintaining a robust scientific software platform, ensuring StarDrop remains dependable, secure, and fit for real project work. 

Try StarDrop 8.2 for yourself 

Every change in StarDrop 8.2 comes back to the same goal: helping you make confident design decisions in 3D, without leaving the workspace where the rest of your thinking already happens. They reflect what users have told us would make a real difference to their day-to-day work, delivered through shorter development cycles that put those improvements in your hands sooner.  

The best way to see what that means for your own projects is to try it. Update to StarDrop 8.2, or book a demo to see it in action. 

About the author

Rae Lawrence, PhD

Product Manager

Rae holds a PhD in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

After 2 years at the helm of Optibrium’s super-star software development team, she made a lateral move within the organisation to focus more on planning and scoping the products and technologies of the future.

As Product Manager, she leverages over two decades of experience in software development, applications science, and business development—including valuable time spent as a customer. Rae serves as the crucial “universal translator,” adeptly converting customer requirements into technical specifications that enable our developers to deliver effective solutions to complex problems

 

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