Open AccessThe Medicinal Chemist's Dream: Faster Design of Better and Safer Drug Candidates
Author(s) -
Marianne Reist,
Laura Novaroli,
Antoine Daina,
Sophie Martel,
PierreAlain Carrupt
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
chimia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.387
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2673-2424
pISSN - 0009-4293
DOI - 10.2533/000942905777676272
Subject(s) - safer , chemist , computer science , lead (geology) , virtual screening , risk analysis (engineering) , drug , key (lock) , drug discovery , data science , biochemical engineering , medicine , pharmacology , chemistry , engineering , computer security , biochemistry , organic chemistry , geomorphology , geology
Successful drug research depends on adequate links between therapeutic benefits for the treatment of a disease, pertinent biological targets and suitable chemical compounds. The pharmacochemistry group at EPGL is active in the development of virtual and experimental methods to enhance these links following a general hit and lead generation strategy to reduce large chemically diverse databases to lead collections. This strategy is based on a careful definition of its numerous steps and on a series of key validation processes. Particular attention is devoted to identify and improve the usefulness of virtual screening techniques widely used in drug development. The guidelines proposed here to use the best validated tools in the most suitable order will help the medicinal chemist to approach his dream, namely to be faster in the design of better and safer drug candidate