Drug Hunter – drug discovery, chemistry, and biopharma highlights
2019 Small Molecule Drug Approvals
Dennis Hu
December 28, 2019
2019 was another big year for drug discovery, with 26 FDA new drug approvals for small molecules and 3 for antibody-drug-conjugates so far. Chris De Savi put together a great…
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Merck/Codexis Magic: Biocatalytic Synthesis of Islatravir
Mike Lambrecht
December 19, 2019
We all knew process scientists were good, but the Merck and Codexis teams just took it to another level! Unnatural nucleosides like Merck’s reverse transcriptase inhibitor islatravir (1, Figure 1)…
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Kinase Inhibitor Types Predicted with Machine-Learning
Cyril Bucher
December 15, 2019
You’ve probably lived this story before: you’re working on your favorite kinase, YFK1, and are looking for selective inhibitors over YFK2. The problem is, they’re virtually identical near the active…
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Managing Liver Injury (DILI) Risk
Dennis Hu
December 8, 2019
Having a clinical drug-induced liver injury (DILI) signal is a surefire way to kill a drug candidate in non-serious indications like pain or chronic indications like diabetes, and will even…
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Unusual Molecular Interactions from the PDB
Dennis Hu
December 1, 2019
Protein-ligand interactions are driven predominantly by strong hydrogen-bonding interactions, de-solvation energetics, and other entropic considerations including ligand lipophilicity. However, the combination of many weaker interactions can contribute to potency, and…
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A Polarized C-H···O Interaction Against IRAK4
Dennis Hu
November 22, 2019
The C-H — O hydrogen bond is so well established in structural biology today, that it’s been overlooked that the C-H — O hydrogen bond was first proposed by a…
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