Future of drug discovery

The continuing development of efficient and practical asymmetric processes will be one of the major driving forces in the future of drug discovery and development. In particular, the design of new general and practical catalytic processes will help explore the link between chirality and biological activity. 

In this chapter, we will first discuss the basic principles of DNA-templated organic synthesis, as it is the mechanistic foundations for DNA-encoded libraries then we will discuss the progressive development of DNA-templated libraries and the evolution into a novel drug discovery tool. We will also discuss the DNA-recorded library, which also encodes library molecules with DNA but is conceptually different. These discussions will naturally involve specific drug discovery programs in which these libraries were applied and finally, we will discuss the outlook of DNA-eneoded libraries in the future of drug discovery. 

Ideally, future antineoplastic drug discovery should be based on a more rational, botanical, chemical, and pharmacological approach. A possible way to test the antineoplastic effects of compounds would be to use some semi in vitro-in vivo models. A more rational approach in antineoplastic research, combined with the enormous chemodiversity of flowering plants, will lead to the discovery of several molecules of clinical value. 

As editors we would also like to take the opportunity to cordially thank all authors for their contributions. We hope that the applications collected in this book will give the reader an idea of the capabilities of mass spectrometry when used in the early stages of drug discovery. Considering that mass spectrometry only began to have an impact on early drug discovery in the past decade, we can expect that this process will be further accelerated in the near future by the rapidly proceeding evolution of mass spectrometry as an analytical tool to screen bioactivity. 

In the perspective of drug discovery it should be well acknowledged upfront that the primary role of chemogenomics resides in my opinion to provide starting points for future drug optimization projects which continue to rely on the classical medicinal chemistry and in vivo pharmacology-based design and selection principles. 

The process of drug discovery from plants involves several steps, from plant collection and vouchering through the preparation of plant extracts to bioassay of the extracts and isolation and structure elucidation of bioactive constituents. An important aspect of this project was that it was conducted with the full informed consent not only of the government of Suriname but also of the Saramaka Maroon tribal people of our collection sites. The way this was done is important, as it sets a standard for future work of this type. 

LC/MS analysis of proteins and peptides is an important part of drug discovery process, as illustrated in this chapter. The combination of various HPLC techniques and advanced MS methods provides unique analytical capabilities of structural identifications for therapeutic proteins and target proteins. The continuous evolution of proteomics research provides both an opportunity and a challenge for further developments in separation techniques and MS characterization methods. It is expected that these analytical techniques will continue to play important roles in drug discovery in the future. 

There are tens of millions of known chemical compounds and more being assembled every day. The number of future combinations of elements is virtually infinite, and the periodic table continues to expand. We ve become almost too good at our craft. Like kids in a candy store, the question is not whether there is more chemistry to be discovered but where we should focus first. With all the problems facing human survival, we can t afford to sit like a million monkeys working in a million labs and hope that solutions will arise. Take, for example, the problem of drug discovery. How do we decide, out of the tens of millions of compounds out there, which medicines to test as cures for diseases In the past, there have been some fortunate accidents, but we can t rely on luck. 

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