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Asked by sloth-savior to Aaron, David, Elaine, Sarah, Zoe on 17 Nov 2014.
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Aaron Acton answered on 17 Nov 2014:
most companies now employ a screening technique, whereby they have a big library of different drug compounds then they screen them against lots of different diseases and see which give the biggest therapeutic effect. Once they identify a few drug compounds that are good they start analysing the compounds more closely and start chemically modifying them to develop drugs that have the best therapeutic effect. But to start with it is all hit or miss, this is the cheapest way compared to sitting down and spending lots of time and money designing and developing a new compound then you test it and it doesn’t work.
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Sarah Ashwood answered on 17 Nov 2014:
Generally the most common technique is screening – start with a molecule that shows some activity and modify parts of it, starting with the most similar and then gradually getting more complex or different. If the drug is being used to target a specific receptor this is often mapped biologically to see what sort of a drug molecule would best interact.
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David Foley answered on 17 Nov 2014:
There are two different types of screening commonly employed. One uses a large set (>100,000) of compounds of around 300 g/mol of molecular weight. The other uses a smaller set (<2,000) of smaller molecules, termed fragments" that weigh around 150 g/mol. Both techniques have strengths and weakness, but the what happens after the screen is the same – any compounds that seem to work are optimised systematically by the chemists.
Another technique towards drug discovery is to use natural compounds from plants. Compare for example the structure of morphine (a nautral compound) to the more potent opioid activator (agonist) N-Phenethylnormorphine or the potent opioid inactivators (antagonists) naloxone and naltrexone.
You can also use hormones of the body as a starting point. For example, the asthma drug Ventolin (salbutamol) acts on adrenaline receptors in the muscle of the lungs and is clearly structurally similar to adrenaline itself, the natural (endogenous) substance.
We're also not above copying good ideas from our competitors and we keep a close eye on the literature as well as attend conferences to keep up to speed with what others in our field are up too 🙂 !!
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