What is a Biologic Drug Anyway?

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. Following our open-access industry overview, in the final installment of this four-part series we bring you the biologics-focused deals opening checkbooks in 2023.

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 part 3 of this 4-part series, we bring you the top-ranked small molecule-focused deals by value. Covering a range of targets and modalities, this article gives Drug Hunter members in-depth background and analysis of the hottest science opening checkbooks in 2023.

One of the key challenges in CNS projects is achieving sufficient unbound brain exposure to engage the target. To predict CNS exposure, scientists employ metrics like CNS MPO scores from Pfizer and Merck, Bayesian models, and methods for balancing physicochemical properties. However, these in silico metrics often fail to correlate well with experimental data. Schrödinger's team has discovered the energy of solvation (E-sol) metric, which accurately predicts Kp,uu and has been validated with CNS-penetrant DLK inhibitors. Explore more in this detailed Drug Hunter article.

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.

The team reviews hundreds of compounds from thousands of papers, press releases, and other sources each month to select candidates for Molecules of the Month. Here we have compiled a table of >70 additional molecules that were of interest in January 2024 along with highlights from some of our favorites, including molecules targeting SOS1, NLRP3, SMARCA2, and more.