2022 Drug Approvals

Small-molecule drug candidates are increasingly falling “ beyond the rule of 5 ,” making oral administration more challenging. Optimizing a drug’s solid form can improve its solubility and bioavailability when further molecular modifications are prohibitive. This minireview covers solid form strategies for increasing the solubility and oral [...]

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.

2019 was another big year for drug discovery, with 29 FDA novel drug approvals for small molecules (including istradefylline which was first approved in Japan, but not including brilliant blue G, fluorodopa F18, Ga-68-DOTATOC, bremelanotide, afamelanotide, and ferric maltol, which could all be considered small molecules by some definitions) [...]

Recently, our team at Drug Hunter compiled the lead programs and mechanisms of small molecule and large molecule biotechs that IPO’d in 2020. We asked featured reviewers from our community what stood out to them about the science of this group of companies, and here are some highlights that emerged from the discussion. Any thoughts and [...]

If you are as excited as we are about this new era of non-opioid pain management and want to learn more, explore our series of articles that unravel the fascinating history of target validation of voltage-gated sodium channels, showcase the breakthroughs achieved so far, and look forward to what lies ahead for the industry.