Design drug discovery programs

Studies using free energy calculations for the design and analysis of potential drug candidates are reviewed in section five. The chapters in this section cover drug discovery programs targeting fructose 1,6-bisphosphatase (diabetes), COX-2 (inflammation), SRC SH2 domain (osteoporosis and cancer), HIV reverse transcriptase (AIDS), HIV-1 protease (AIDS), thymidylate synthase (cancer), dihydrofolate reductase (cancer) and adenosine deaminase (immunosuppression, myocardial ischemia). 

More recently, the focus has moved from diversity in favor of combinatorial libraries designed to target specific receptors or enzymes (12). While these single-target-focused libraries remain a key component of many drug-discovery programs, and are useful in both hit to lead and lead optimization contexts,... 

There are four major elements in the design of any successful natural-products-based drug discovery program acquisition of biomass, effective screening, bioactivity-driven fractionation, and rapid and effective structure elucidation (which includes dereplication). Although some of these have been mentioned earlier, it is instructive to bring them together here. 

In this chapter, we have studied various syntheses of diverse marine natural products. Some of them are connected with drug-discovery programs. Molecular design in life science requires chemists ingenuity to create better drugs than the lead compounds among natural products. 

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