Phenotypic drug discovery has been highlighted in the past decade as an important strategy in the discovery of new medical entities. How many marketed drugs are derived from phenotypic screens? From the most recent examples, what were the factors enabling target identification and validation? This book answers these questions by elaborating on fundamental capabilities required for phenotypic drug discovery and using case studies to illustrate approaches and key success factors. Written and edited by experienced practitioners from both industry and academia, this publication will equip researchers with a thought-provoking guide to the application and future development of contemporary phenotypic drug discovery for clinical success.

Phenotypic drug discovery has been highlighted in the past decade as an important strategy in the discovery of novel medical entities. This book aims to equip researchers with a thought-provoking guide to the application and development of contemporary phenotypic drug discovery for clinical success.

The modern drug developers? guide for making informed choices among the diverse target identification methods Target Discovery and Validation: Methods and Strategies for Drug Discovery offers a hands-on review of the modern technologies for drug target identification and validation. With contributions from noted industry and academic experts, the book addresses the most recent chemical, biological, and computational methods. Additionally, the book highlights techologies that are applicable to ?difficult? targets and drugs directed at multiple targets, including chemoproteomics, activity-based protein profiling, pathway mapping, genome-wide association studies, and array-based profiling. Throughout, the authors highlight a range of diverse approaches, and target validation studies reveal how these methods can support academic and drug discovery scientists in their target discovery and validation research. This resource: -Offers a guide to identifying and validating targets, a key enabling technology without which no new drug development is possible -Presents the information needed for choosing the appropriate assay method from the ever-growing range of available options -Provides practical examples from recent drug development projects, e. g. in kinase inhibitor profiling Written for medicinal chemists, pharmaceutical professionals, biochemists, biotechnology professionals, and pharmaceutical chemists, Target Discovery and Validation explores the current methods for the identification and validation of drug targets in one comrpehensive volume. It also includes numerous practical examples.

Improving and Accelerating Therapeutic Development for Nervous System Disorders is the summary of a workshop convened by the IOM Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders to examine opportunities to accelerate early phases of drug development for nervous system drug discovery. Workshop participants discussed challenges in neuroscience research for enabling faster entry of potential treatments into first-in-human trials, explored how new and emerging tools and technologies may improve the efficiency of research, and considered mechanisms to facilitate a more effective and efficient development pipeline. There are several challenges to the current drug development pipeline for nervous system disorders. The fundamental etiology and pathophysiology of many nervous system disorders are unknown and the brain is inaccessible to study, making it difficult to develop accurate models. Patient heterogeneity is high, disease pathology can occur years to decades before becoming clinically apparent, and diagnostic and treatment biomarkers are lacking. In addition, the lack of validated targets, limitations related to the predictive validity of animal models - the extent to which the model predicts clinical efficacy - and regulatory barriers can also impede translation and drug development for nervous system disorders. Improving and Accelerating Therapeutic Development for Nervous System Disorders identifies avenues for moving directly from cellular models to human trials, minimizing the need for animal models to test efficacy, and discusses the potential benefits and risks of such an approach. This report is a timely discussion of opportunities to improve early drug development with a focus toward preclinical trials.

The first volume of the book series "Successful Drug Discovery" is focusing on new drug discoveries during the last decade, from established drugs to recently introduced drugs of all kinds: small-molecule-, peptide-, and protein-based drugs. The role of serendipity is analyzed in some very successful drugs where the research targets of the lead molecule and the drug are different. Phenotypic and target-based drug discovery approaches are discussed from the viewpoint of pioneer drugs and analogues. This volume gives an excellent overview of insulin analogues including a discussion of the properties of rapid-acting and long-acting formulations of this important hormone. The major part of the book is devoted to case histories of new drug discoveries described by their key inventors. Eight case histories range across many therapeutic fields. The goal of this book series is to help the participants of the drug research community with a reference book series and to support teaching in medicinal chemistry with case histories and review articles of new drugs.

The book "Drug Selectivity - An Evolving Concept in Medicinal Chemistry" provides a current overview and comprehensive compilation for medicinal chemists that discusses the effects of aiming for multiple targets on the entire drug development process. The result is a broad survey of current and future strategies for drug selectivity in medicinal chemistry with theoretical but also practical aspects. Different strategies are presented and evaluated, such as various design approaches, merged multiple ligands, discovery technologies and a broad range of successful examples of unselective drugs taken from all major disease areas. With its wide-ranging view of an emerging new paradigm in drug development, this handbook is of prime importance for every medicinal and pharmaceutical chemist.

Phenotypic Switching: Implications in Biology and Medicine provides a comprehensive examination of phenotypic switching across biological systems, including underlying mechanisms, evolutionary significance, and its role in biomedical science. Contributions from international leaders discuss conceptual and theoretical aspects of phenotypic plasticity, its influence over biological development, differentiation, biodiversity, and potential applications in cancer therapy, regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy, among other treatments. Chapters discuss fundamental mechanisms of phenotypic switching, including transition states, cell fate decisions, epigenetic factors, stochasticity, protein-based inheritance, specific areas of human development and disease relevance, phenotypic plasticity in melanoma, prostate cancer, breast cancer, non-genetic heterogeneity in cancer, hepatitis C, and more. This book is essential for active researchers, basic and translational scientists, clinicians, postgraduates and students in genetics, human genomics, pathology, bioinformatics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology and adaptive opportunities in yeast. - Thoroughly addresses the conceptual, experimental and translational aspects that underlie phenotypic plasticity - Emphasizes quantitative approaches, nonlinear dynamics, mechanistic insights and key methodologies to advance phenotypic plasticity studies - Features a diverse range of chapter contributions from international leaders in the field

With the most comprehensive and up-to-date overview of structure-based drug discovery covering both experimental and computational approaches, Structural Biology in Drug Discovery: Methods, Techniques, and Practices describes principles, methods, applications, and emerging paradigms of structural biology as a tool for more efficient drug development. Coverage includes successful examples, academic and industry insights, novel concepts, and advances in a rapidly evolving field. The combined chapters, by authors writing from the frontlines of structural biology and drug discovery, give readers a valuable reference and resource that: Presents the benefits, limitations, and potentiality of major techniques in the field such as X-ray crystallography, NMR, neutron crystallography, cryo-EM, mass spectrometry and other biophysical techniques, and computational structural biology Includes detailed chapters on druggability, allostery, complementary use of thermodynamic and kinetic information, and powerful approaches such as structural chemogenomics and fragment-based drug design Emphasizes the need for the in-depth biophysical characterization of protein targets as well as of therapeutic proteins, and for a thorough quality assessment of experimental structures Illustrates advances in the field of established therapeutic targets like kinases, serine proteinases, GPCRs, and epigenetic proteins, and of more challenging ones like protein-protein interactions and intrinsically disordered proteins

Small Molecule Drug Discovery: Methods, Molecules and Applications presents the methods used to identify bioactive small molecules, synthetic strategies and techniques to produce novel chemical entities and small molecule libraries, chemoinformatics to characterize and enumerate chemical libraries, and screening methods, including biophysical techniques, virtual screening and phenotypic screening. The second part of the book gives an overview of privileged cyclic small molecules and major classes of natural product-derived small molecules, including carbohydrate-derived compounds, peptides and peptidomimetics, and alkaloid-inspired compounds. The last section comprises an exciting collection of selected case studies on drug discovery enabled by small molecules in the fields of cancer research, CNS diseases and infectious diseases. The discovery of novel molecular entities capable of specific interactions represents a significant challenge in early drug discovery. Small molecules are low molecular weight organic compounds that include natural products and metabolites, as well as drugs and other xenobiotics. When the biological target is well defined and understood, the rational design of small molecule ligands is possible. Alternatively, small molecule libraries are being used for unbiased assays for complex diseases where a target is unknown or multiple factors contribute to a disease pathology. - Outlines modern concepts and synthetic strategies underlying the building of small molecules and their chemical libraries useful for drug discovery - Provides modern biophysical methods to screening small molecule libraries, including high-throughput screening, small molecule microarrays, phenotypic screening and chemical genetics - Presents the most advanced chemoinformatics tools to characterize the structural features of small molecule libraries in terms of chemical diversity and complexity, also including the application of virtual screening approaches - Gives an overview of structural features and classification of natural product-derived small molecules, including carbohydrate derivatives, peptides and peptidomimetics, and alkaloid-inspired small molecules

This volume provides a collection of contemporary perspectives on using activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) for biological discoveries in protein science, microbiology, and immunology. A common theme throughout is the special utility of ABPP to interrogate protein function and small-molecule interactions on a global scale in native biological systems. Each chapter showcases distinct advantages of ABPP applied to diverse protein classes and biological systems. As such, the book offers readers valuable insights into the basic principles of ABPP technology and how to apply this approach to biological questions ranging from the study of post-translational modifications to targeting bacterial effectors in host-pathogen interactions.