An overview of drug discovery and development

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 939-947 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurken Berdigaliyev ◽  
Mohamad Aljofan

A new medicine will take an average of 10–15 years and more than US$2 billion before it can reach the pharmacy shelf. Traditionally, drug discovery relied on natural products as the main source of new drug entities, but was later shifted toward high-throughput synthesis and combinatorial chemistry-based development. New technologies such as ultra-high-throughput drug screening and artificial intelligence are being heavily employed to reduce the cost and the time of early drug discovery, but they remain relatively unchanged. However, are there other potentially faster and cheaper means of drug discovery? Is drug repurposing a viable alternative? In this review, we discuss the different means of drug discovery including their advantages and disadvantages.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Gerckens ◽  
Hani Alsafadi ◽  
Darcy Wagner ◽  
Katharina Heinzelmann ◽  
Kenji Schorpp ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanaa Bardaweel

Recently, an outbreak of fatal coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has emerged from China and is rapidly spreading worldwide. As the coronavirus pandemic rages, drug discovery and development become even more challenging. Drug repurposing of the antimalarial drug chloroquine and its hydroxylated form had demonstrated apparent effectiveness in the treatment of COVID-19 associated pneumonia in clinical trials. SARS-CoV-2 spike protein shares 31.9% sequence identity with the spike protein presents in the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus (MERS-CoV), which infects cells through the interaction of its spike protein with the DPP4 receptor found on macrophages. Sitagliptin, a DPP4 inhibitor, that is known for its antidiabetic, immunoregulatory, anti-inflammatory, and beneficial cardiometabolic effects has been shown to reverse macrophage responses in MERS-CoV infection and reduce CXCL10 chemokine production in AIDS patients. We suggest that Sitagliptin may be beneficial alternative for the treatment of COVID-19 disease especially in diabetic patients and patients with preexisting cardiovascular conditions who are already at higher risk of COVID-19 infection.


2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (21) ◽  
pp. 1443-1450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregor Zlokarnik ◽  
Peter D.J. Grootenhuis ◽  
John B. Watson

2001 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 429-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W. Pantoliano ◽  
Eugene C. Petrella ◽  
Joseph D. Kwasnoski ◽  
Victor S. Lobanov ◽  
James Myslik ◽  
...  

More general and universally applicable drug discovery assay technologies are needed in order to keep pace with the recent advances in combinatorial chemistry and genomics-based target generation. Ligand-induced conformational stabilization of proteins is a well-understood phenomenon in which substrates, inhibitors, cofactors, and even other proteins provide enhanced stability to proteins on binding. This phenomenon is based on the energetic coupling of the ligand-binding and protein-melting reactions. In an attempt to harness these biophysical properties for drug discovery, fully automated instrumentation was designed and implemented to perform miniaturized fluorescence-based thermal shift assays in a microplate format for the high throughput screening of compound libraries. Validation of this process and instrumentation was achieved by investigating ligand binding to more than 100 protein targets. The general applicability of the thermal shift screening strategy was found to be an important advantage because it circumvents the need to design and retool new assays with each new therapeutic target. Moreover, the miniaturized thermal shift assay methodology does not require any prior knowledge of a therapeutic target's function, making it ideally suited for the quantitative high throughput drug screening and evaluation of targets derived from genomics.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierfausto Seneci ◽  
Giorgio Fassina ◽  
Vladimir Frecer ◽  
Stanislav Miertus

Abstract The review will focus on the aspects of combinatorial chemistry and technologies that are more relevant in the modern pharmaceutical process. An historical, critical introduction is followed by three chapters, dealing with the use of combinatorial chemistry/high throughput synthesis in medicinal chemistry; the rational design of combinatorial libraries using computer-assisted combinatorial drug design; and the use of combinatorial technologies in biotechnology. The impact of “combinatorial thinking” in drug discovery in general, and in the examples reported in details, is critically discussed. Finally, an expert opinion on current and future trends in combinatorial chemistry and combinatorial technologies is provided.


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