Here is a nice review of recent new modalities in Drug Discovery.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.8b00378
The article covered wide range of recent technologies.
1. Peptide based drug discovery not only synthetic but also venoms.
2. DELI.
3. New structure for drug discovery partnerships. In the section, the authors well documented about compound sharing (i.e. ELF) and risk-sharing, collection leasing partnerships and crowd sourcing. I am interested in compound sharing. Because there is a consortium for library in Japan named J-CLIC: Japan Compound Library ConsortiumJ-CLIC. The consortium joint purchase many compounds from supplier in pharmaceutical companies in Japan. It will be cost effective. I think this is one of the nice proposal in non competitive area.
Also crowdsourcing is interesting for me. It means open innovation!
4. Strategies for protein structure mimetics, stabilize alpha-helix or beta sheet. I did not know scaffold grafting technology. The technology is impressive for me.
5. In the section, the author introduced 2D combinatorial libraries and informa. This technology is used for direct RNA targeting by small molecules. Modulation of translation with small molecules is challenging I think, but this approach seems work well and well designed. Also PROTAC and miRNA, anti sense oligomer.
Figure 20 in the article is very nice summary about scope and limitation of these technologies.
There are many toolkit for drug discovery today. It is not limited only small molecules. The role of medicinal chemist is still expanding. Keep open my eyes and catch up new technology and science to develop new drug for human health.
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