Week 12 Post 2

Once you test many compounds from your drug library and come up with your hits, you must narrow down these hundreds or thousands of molecules to leads. Leads are the compounds that are typically patented and are worked on to become drugs. The way hit are weeded out are through many methods. Firstly, many experienced chemists can visually notice by the structure of the hit will work well. They can see PAINS which means a molecule that doesn't bind to the binding site but to proteins overall, and that doesn't help to inhibit the protein. Another reason to get rid of a hit is if it is too similar to something already patented. Sometimes, a chemist will add things to change the structure slightly and make the molecule patentable. If a compound has a functional group that is known to be toxic, it cant become a drug and so there is no reason to. There are many other reasons such as metabolism and specific enzymes that will effect the viability of a hit.

The path from the desire to cure a drug to a drug on the market is long and a large part of this process is deciding what molecule to develop. The process was describe by the proffessor on the video lecture as a game of battleship. There are 10^63 molecules in drug space, and you are guessing individual ones until you get a hit, then you can find others slightly easier.

Comments

  1. Ms. DunleyJanuary 17, 2018 at 1:09 PM

    The comparison to Battleship helps me picture the process!

    ReplyDelete

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