Drug Hunter Letters #2: On Carboxylic Acids and Acylglucuronides
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Practical Lessons and Insights from Seasoned Drug Hunters
During Drug Hunter’s Flash Talks, experts talk in-depth about hot topics in drug discovery. These experts also share insights beyond the subjects of their presentations, such as how they got inspired to become a drug hunter, what their favorite molecule is, what excites them most in drug discovery today, and what advice they wish they could give their younger selves. Here is a quick look at some of these insightful nuggets from Flash Talks hosted between January and August 2024.
ACS Spring 2024: First Time Disclosures
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.
What is a Biologic Drug Anyway?
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Own Definition. Recently I posted on “biologic drugs” which were approved in 2019 . All was well in my little scientific universe, until I received this in an email: “You recently reported "14 novel biologic drugs," referring to 'novel' biopharmaceuticals approved CDER. But, … You also include [...]
Leaving Academia to Discover a Billion-Dollar Drug: Reflections from a Thirty-Year Path to Momelotinib’s Approval
Momelotinib is a JAK inhibitor approved by the FDA in September 2023 for treating myelofibrosis. Last year, the molecule’s co-inventors, Andrew Wilks and Christopher Burns, gave a Drug Hunter Flash talk about the development of this drug with a fascinating mechanism of action.
In celebration of the molecule’s advancement, here we recap their brilliant story, including Wilks’ discovery of the JAK kinases and how he gave them their name, and the long, sometimes fraught journey of momelotinib through several companies before its acquisition and commercialization by GSK.
Deucravacitinib: 2022 Small Molecule of the Year
We asked the global drug discovery community to nominate and vote on their favorite molecule from 2022, and the results are in. The 2022 winner, with the most overall votes across the ten finalist molecules , is BMS’ oral, deuterated allosteric TYK2 inhibitor, deucravacitinib, the first new treatment for plaque psoriasis in nearly a decade [...]
