How does a drug come to be a drug? Drug design encompasses organic synthetic chemistry, pharmacology and biology and falls under the name “Medicinal Chemistry”. Medicinal chemists are engineers of the drug discovery world. With their knowledge, medicinal chemists can design drug molecules to bind to specific protein targets, cause a desired efficacy against a disease of interest, survive the many environments of the body and assist in the translation to animal models. But how does the medicinal chemist do this? Through this series of online talks, you will be exposed to key aspects of drug design and see what it takes to be an engineer of drugs.
How does a drug make it into the systemic circulation? What do chemists have to keep an eye on during drug development to ensure the efficacy of a drug? With a focus on permeability, the following talk highlights physiochemical properties responsible for the uptake of a drug and how this is interlaced with other pharmacokinetic areas.
Chemists need guidelines, metrics, to assist in their decision making for developing compounds throughout the drug discovery pipeline. How do they know if they have make a good or bad modification if there is no change in potency? What tools can they use to limit potential toxicity risks later on in the development? The following talk takes you through key tools such as Ligand Efficiency (LE), Lipophilic Ligand Efficiency (LLE) and Property Forecast Index (PFI).
Pan Assay Interference Compounds (PAINS) are functional motifs that can cause false read-outs in biological experiments. These false positives can be the culprits of loses in drug discovery projects. The following talk highlights what are PAINS and the steps involved to determine if you are indeed working with a PAIN or an active species.
Why do drug discovery scientist care so much about the hERG channel. In this short talk learn what the hERG channel is and it physiological function, why blocking this channel is not desirable and what kinds of drugs bind to this channel.
This video takes you through how to chemically avoid blocking the hERG channel. Many drugs can find this a stumbling block in their drug discovery process, so it is important to know how to design around this. It is advised you watch Part 1 before watching this video.