molecules of the month

Happy 2021! Here’s the last installment of Small Molecules of the Month for 2020. It was so hard to narrow this down to one sheet of molecules since there were so many timely publications in December. One of my favorites this month is an oral(!) ultra-long acting insulin derivative from Novo which demonstrated human efficacy in Ph. II (and yes it’s still considered a small molecule). Another interesting one is the oral non-covalent HbS modulator from Pfizer, which binds in a 2-drugs-to-1-complex fashion similar to early analogs of the covalent drug voxelotor. There were also two TNFa asymmetric trimer stabilizers from AbbVie and BMS that you shouldn’t miss, and several candidates to note for important cancer targets (CDK9, ERK, PI3Ka, PARP, ER, and IDO1). Enjoy!

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