Practical Aspects of Drug Discovery

This course was run with CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, India.   This was our first visit to India, and had a fabulous time with our hosts in their beautiful campus.

We hosted 24 drug discovery scientists from throughout India for a week of learning all about drug discovery.  The course takes the participants from the early stages of planning the target product profile, through identifying hits, targets, mode of action and then how to get your compound ready for the clinical phase.  Each day had a group task where the group split into smaller ‘pharma companies’ and worked through data to develop a clinical compound.

DRUG DISCOVERY MISSION

Drug Discovery Mission (DDM) is designed as an interactive tool to understand the processes involved in drug discovery. Drug discovery is a highly collaborative process that utilizes scientists from all disciplines. Without this multi-disciplinary approach, it would not be possible for drugs to make it to market. DDM will ask you to step outside of your comfort zone by exposing you to all aspects of the pre-clinical drug discovery process.

Despite the drug discovery process taking ~15 years from idea to market, the DDM will ask you to cover most of this process in 1-week. By embedding yourself into a team of drug discovery scientists, you will be asked to find a cure/treatment for a neglected tropical disease of WCAIR’s choosing. In order to succeed, you must work as a team to make critical analytical decisions and make conclusions on data presented to you.

DDM is comprised of talks and workshops.  Topics included:

• Target product profiles and its role in unifying team goals
• Drug target interactions and how to design this into compounds
• Physiochemical properties and guidelines to succeed in drug discovery
• In vitro drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics (DMPK) and associated data
• Linking in vivo data to compound design

MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY 101

What does a medicinal chemist need to know about drug discovery? What contributions can this discipline make and how? 

This course has been designed to give chemists working in medicinal chemistry a flavour of the different stages of the drug discovery process. Drug Discovery is highly collaborative, expensive and time consuming but reaps rewards of single dose single cures, vaccinations, and treatments. Our course highlights how to start and progress a drug discovery campaign with real life examples. By utilising a series of interactive talks, workshops and tutorials, participants will learn how chemical matter can be progressed using chemical optimisation, in vitro and in vivo DMPK. 

Over 6-weeks, the team will take you through a series of topics to give you an appreciation of all aspects of drug discovery research.
• Target assessment and screening
• Hit discovery and structure activity relationship
• In vitro/In vivo DMPK and strategies to optimise
• How to optimise pharmacokinetic properties 

DRUG DISCOVERY: AN INTRODUCTION

Making medicines engulfs multiple areas of science to form the highly collaborative field known as “Drug Discovery”.  When you ingest a medicine, how does the medicine know where to go?

Drug Discovery: A beginner’s guide has been designed to give professionals, working in all kinds of sectors, a flavour of what medicines are and how are they “discovered”.  Drug Discovery is highly collaborative, expensive and time consuming but reaps rewards of single dose single cures, vaccinations, treatments etc.  Our course highlights the journey of a medicine and the scientists involved in its development.  By utilising a series of interactive talks, participants will learn the different stages of the drug discovery process and how they can get involved within this collaborative field.

Over 4-weeks, the team will take you through a series of topics to give you an appreciation of what it takes to be a medicine.

SYNTHESIS SIMPLIFIED

Knowing how to make molecules is vital for medicinal chemists, but how do we know where to start? 

Over 4 weeks, we will build a solid understanding of the most popular reactions in medicinal chemistry, including when and how to use them.  Using a mixture of interactive talks and workshops, this course will focus on organic synthesis for medicinal chemists. 

Week 1: Amides, Esters and Protecting Groups 

Week 2: Heterocyclic Synthesis 

Week 3: Aromatic Substitution Reactions 

Week 4: Cross-coupling and Metal-Catalysed Reactions 

Practical Aspects of Drug Discovery: At the Interface of Biology, Chemistry and Pharmacology

Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Uruguay 14-18 November 2022

This programme was open to applicants from institutes based in Latin America and the Caribbean, and with a background knowledge of any discipline related to drug discovery.

With our colleagues in Universidad de la Republica Uruguay, and Wellcome Connecting Science we were pleased to be able to offer this programme at the Institut Pasteur de Montevideo.

This programme has been designed to provide an overview of the entire drug discovery process, from screening and hit discovery, assay development, drug design and an introduction to pre-clinical and clinical development.

With a mix of lectures, case-studies, and discussions, we focus on the need for drug discovery in Latin America and how these approaches can be applied in the regional context and environment.

Target to Candidate: An Introduction to Drug Discovery

University of São Paulo, Brazil (online) 2022

Universities of Pretoria & South Africa, South Africa (online) 2021

This course has been designed to give scientists a flavour of how a drug project goes from idea to pre-clinical candidacy.  Drug Discovery is highly collaborative, expensive and time consuming but reaps rewards of single dose single cures, vaccinations, treatments etc.  Our course highlights how to start and progress a drug discovery campaign with real life examples from experts working in this area of science, both academia and industry.  By utilising a series of interactive talks, workshops and tutorials, participants will learn the success, failures and challenges of drug discovery.

An Introduction to HPLC and Mass Spectrometry

Ghana (online), 2021

To support our partners in Ghana, we developed a short course in the theory of HPLC and MS.

As part of a larger project with Ghana, funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences, a series of working groups were organised.  The ability to understand HPLC and MS was an area identified for training development.

This short course is to be delivered online to partners from 5 institutes in Ghana.

Drug Discovery Mission

Online, 2021

Drug Discovery Mission (DDM) is designed as an interactive tool to understand the processes involved in drug
discovery. Drug discovery is a highly collaborative process that utilizes scientists from all disciplines. Without this
multi-disciplinary approach, it would not be possible for drugs to make it to market. DDM will ask participants to step outside of their comfort zone by exposing them to all aspects of the pre-clinical drug discovery process.

For further information about the programme please see the course page.

If you are interested in organising this course for your institute, please speak to Lauren Webster.

Drug Discovery Training

College of Medicine, Malawi 2019

We returned to Malawi for a 2nd visit in 2019, this time adding in DMPK to the training programme.  Having spent 6 months with us, Happy Nyirongo helped develop a training module for students, and helped pilot this module to a group of lecturers, PhD and MSc students from College of Medicine and Malawi University of Science and Technology.  For more details on this programme please see here.

Practical Aspects of Drug Discovery: At the Interface of Biology, Chemistry and Pharmacology

H3D, University of Cape Town, South Africa 2019

In collaboration with the Wellcome Genome Campus and the Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D), we ran the first overseas Practical Aspects of Drug Discovery course.

Delivering a week of interactive lectures, workshops and discussion sessions, the trainers from WCAIR and H3D gave an insight into all aspects of drug discovery research.  Covering theoretical, practical and organisational aspects of small molecule and natural product drug discovery.

Chemistry and Biology for Drug Discovery

College of Medicine, Malawi 2018

We delivered two weeks of training for researchers from throughout Malawi on biological assay techniques, HPLC, NMR and isolation chemistry.  Find out more.

The training was delivered in the Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine in Blantyre, Malawi.