Computational Partnership in Small Molecule Drug Discovery

We asked the global drug discovery community to nominate and vote on their favorite molecule from 2023, and the results are in. The 2023 winner, with the most votes between ten molecules, is Merck’s oral macrocyclic peptide inhibitor of PCSK9, MK-0616, derived from mRNA display technology and shown to have clinical efficacy. Herein, we highlight what makes MK-0616 so impressive to the drug discovery community.

As part of our Coffee Chat webinar series, our team (Lew Pennington, Matt Hesse, and Dennis Koester), explored Drug Hunter’s patent highlight feature and shared their favorite molecules and notable stories from recent patent filings. we present a PDF of the slide deck. Check out the recording of the talk on our Drug Hunter YouTube channel.

As part of our Flash Talk webinar series, we present a PDF of Nicholas Meanwell's slide deck entitled "The Chemist's Playbook: Impactful Bioisosteres for Modern Drug Design". Check out the recording of the talk on our Drug Hunter YouTube channel.

The highly anticipated First Time Disclosures session at the ACS Spring 2024 Meeting in New Orleans, organized by Nicole Goodwin and H. Rachel Lagiakos, presented a variety of new orally available small molecules. In case you missed any of these exciting molecules, from Oric’s CD73 inhibitor to Deciphera’s first-in-class ULK1/2 inhibitor, this article provides the structures and targets for the novel molecules disclosed at the session.

The Drug Hunter team is piloting a new series highlighting notable disclosures in the patent literature to provide our readers a timely and scientifically flavorful synopsis of therapeutic targets being actively pursued, emerging industry breakthroughs, and fascinating chemical matter. Here we highlight 12 patents published in December 2023 that piqued our interest, and compiled a searchable table comprising key information from more than 180 additional patents of potential interest to drug hunters. If you have any suggestions on how to make this more useful, please let us know!