Understanding how a small molecule ligand binds to its target is valuable in drug discovery, because it enables more efficient optimization through structure-based design, better mechanistic understanding of molecular pharmacology, and greater confidence in the therapeutic hypothesis from both safety and efficacy perspectives. Recently, Drug Hunter highlighted methods for target identification when the target is unknown.
In this minireview, Dr. Romyr Dominique introduces three key concepts in fragment-based drug discovery and shares his favorite articles and resources on fragment-based drug discovery. Fragment-based drug discovery has emerged as a key tool for acquiring starting points for challenging targets like KRAS. By Dr. Romyr Dominique What is FBDD, or [...]
In this minireview, Drs. Jayme L. Dahlin and Michael A. Walters summarize the different mechanisms by which molecules can be AICs (assay interference compounds), a subset of which can be flagged as PAINS (pan-assay interference compounds) by a popular set of substructure filters. They bin these into non-technology-related interference [...]
In this article, Dr. Thuy Tran , a CMC Project Leader at Servier, gives us a quick explanation of what an IND is, what a clinical hold is, and why clinical holds happen for drug discovery scientists. What is an IND? Health authorities require drug developers to provide and justify safety and efficacy information for new treatments in humans [...]
This article explains what Phase II drug metabolism is, contains a poster summarizing common enzyme-mediated bioconjugation reactions, and provides interesting examples of Phase II transformations and their impact on drug pharmacology. "As any biotransformation scientist will know, metabolism is not a binary function, and drugs can be cleared [...]