DESIGNING A BETTER DRUG: The combination of chemical groups from three different fragments that bind weakly to an enzyme produce a potent new enzyme inhibitor (center) that binds in the nM range.COURTESY OF RODERICK HUBBARD
In search of better drugs and therapies, researchers are constantly looking for new ways to identify compounds that selectively block disease pathways. Industrial labs have relied on high-throughput screening to finger promising new molecules, but most academic labs lack the equipment and resources to scan many thousands, even millions, of compounds. For a long while this shut academic labs out of such searches, but a related technique, fragment-based drug discovery (also called fragment-based lead discovery), offers another way to develop small-molecule drugs and chemical probes for investigating biological processes. And this approach relies on instruments and expertise available at many academic institutions.
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Piece by Piece
A guide to fragment-based drug discovery
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35711/title/Piece-by-Piece/
