WEEK 9: DRUG TARGETS AND DRUG DESIGN Flashcards
What are the urgent level hazards in terms of highly resistant pathogens?
- clostridiodes difficile
- CRE (Carbapenam-resistant Enterobacteriaece)
- Drug resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae
What is the concept of ‘One Health’?
- One Health concept recognises that the health of the human population is connected to the health of animals and the environment
- So we shouldn’t be giving the same antibiotics to animals that we take
Are the same antibiotic classes used in humans and farm animals?
- YES e.g. Chickens are given two antibiotics
What is the most deadly place for nosocomial infections?
- ICUs!
- Rely heavily on sanitation but this is not working due to bacteria living in TINY scratches on surfaces
What does the antimicrobial stewardship program involve? (acronym)
- STODNOE
- Survey
- Timeout
- Optimise therapy
- Diagnose
- New
- One health
- Education
What is the drug pipeline?
- Pre discovery
- Academia (Drug discovery and preclinical)
- Clinical trials (Phase I, II ,and III)
- Approval and market
Why is the drug pipeline a broken business model?
- Because the patent only lasts for two years
what is the rough pathway in the drug discovery pipeline?
- Infectious disease–> drug target? –> Target characterisation/hit candiadate search–> Hit candidate–> improve potency–> Lead optimisation–> Pre-clinical development
In the academia, reverse pharmacology section of the drug pipeline, what will an ideal drug target have?
- Be identified from fundamental research
- Inhibition or interference with its activity results in microbe death or a reduction in virulence of the disease model (enzyme will often be involved in the fundamental process required for survival)
- Good understanding of how the target functions in normal physiology
What is essential to have when starting a drug discovery project with a new drug target?
Sequence of the target o Amino acid for protein o Nucleotide for nucleic acid - In vitro production of target Activity assay o Robust, quick and cheap o Able to assess the activity of target the presence of drug-like compounds “hits”
What is desirable to have when starting a drug discovery project with a new drug target?
- Mechanism of action–> detailed knowledge of what the target does and how it achieves its function
- Structure of target
In terms of microbiology, what is a hit candidate?
- Active substance that has the desired microbial action on the microbe or in a disease model
- “hit” will be starting point to further develop or optimise active substance into drug
Which two places do you find the hits?
1) Start with the natural substrate and produce derivative 2) Screening libraries ( thousands to millions of candidates)
What is involved in starting with the natural substrate and producing a derivative to find hits?
- Making the natural substrate MORE drug like (i.e. so it still binds but can’t work)
What is involved in screening libraries to find hits?
- Purified natural products (pant derived, microbial metabolites, marine invertebrates)
- Purified chemical (Synthetic small molecules >300 Da stored for this purpose)
- Extracts (crude preparations of (often) natural substances)
- Fragments (small chemical entities <300 Da)