What Drug Hunters Wish They’d Known When Starting Out

Among the small molecule highlights in January’s news were a $100M+ Series A for a PARP1 + PI3Kα-focused company, clinical data with an SLC inhibitor for PKU, a 5-HT2C superagonist for seizures, and a NK1,3 dual antagonist for women’s health. A novel anti-obesity agent from phenotypic screening also made headlines, and the close of a major acquisition may bring relief to the industry. You can read about these notable scientific highlights and more below.

Gleevec (imatinib) was the first tyrosine kinase inhibitor approved for the treatment of cancer and one of the first products to emerge from "rational drug design."  It's invention changed chronic myeloid leukemia from an incurable death sentence to a manageable disease. Here's a look back on the tremendous value it's created over the last [...]

Drug Hunter has sifted through news articles, press releases, financial disclosures, SEC filings and more to bring you a roundup of 2023's biggest mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the drug discovery world. In this 4-part series we will give you an open-access overview of the M&A landscape, and then for Drug Hunter members in the coming weeks, we will be providing in-depth coverage and analysis of the small molecule-focused (parts 2 & 3) and biologics-based deals (part 4). This premium content includes background on the targets, chemical/biological matter and clinical data driving these deals.

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.

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 [...]