Molecules and drug hunting Flashcards
What are the ways that drugs may be discovered?
- Compounds from nature
- Sheer luck
- Rational drug design
What are the 4 classes of natural products?
- Alkaloids
- Phenylpropanoids
- Polyketides
- Terpenoids
Abrasive Pilots Pooped Tastefully.
What are the ways of carrying out drug discovery using a rational approach?
- Start from the natural ligand
- Enhance side effects of other drugs
- Computer aided design
- Me too drugs
What is the principle of rational drug design?
Products must also bind to the active site of the enzyme, and that a molecule that has shared structural elements with the products should also bind strongly to the enzyme.
What are the 2 ways to carry out computer aided drug design?
- Molecular docking studies
- 3D pharmacophore identification
How does molecular docking studies work?
- If the crystal target protein and ligand that binds to it is known
- this software can then be used to design compounds that will bind to the protein
- can screen the compounds to see which ones will bind better
What is the limitation of molecular docking studies?
- The software can’t display the protein’s flexibility well
- Doesn’t take entropy and binding energies into account
- Doesn’t consider off target binding—> side effects
How does 3D pharmacophore identification work?
- It represents the relative positions of important binding groups in space
- This allows people to design compounds that fit into this model
What are me too drugs?
When drug companies use established drugs from competitors as lead compounds
What is a drawback of me too drugs?
There may be patent restrictions
What is drug repurposing?
It utilizes existing drugs for new medical indications
What are the benefits of drug repurposing?
It is faster because data on pharmacokinetics, safety and manufacturing is already known
