Drug Discovery Series – serie

The drug discovery and development process is getting longer, more expensive, and no better. The industry suffers from the same clinical attrition and safety-related market withdrawal rates today as it did 20 years ago. Industrialization of Drug Discovery: From Target Selection Through Lead Optimization scrutinizes these problems in detail, contrasting the promise of technology and industrialization with the challenges of using the tools available to their best advantage. The book explores early successes, examines the current state of the art, and provides a strategic analysis of the issues currently facing drug discovery.Introducing the historical background and current status of the industry, the book delineates the basic tenets underlying modern drug discovery, how they have evolved, and their use in various approaches and strategies. It examines, in detail, the regulations, requirements, guidelines, and draft documents that guide so many FDA actions. The editor devotes the remainder of the discussion to industrialization, compound and knowledge management functions, the drug screening process, collaboration, and finally, ethical issues. Drawing on real-life, from-the-trenches examples, the book elucidates a new approach to drug discovery and development. This modern-day, back-to-basics approach includes three steps: understand the science, unravel the story, and then intelligently apply the technology, bringing to bear the entire armamentarium of industrialization techniques, not just automation, to the discovery process. Using these steps, you can meet the goals of more specific targets, more selective compounds, and decreased cycle times. In effect, you can look for a bigger needle in a smaller haystack. Daniel E. Levy, editor of the Drug Discovery Series, is the founder of DEL BioPharma, a consulting service for drug discovery programs. He also maintains a blog that explores organic chemistry.

As central actors in most biological functions, proteins are the subject of intense study. This has driven the development of increasingly sophisticated approaches for the study of proteins, which has extended to proteomic level methodologies. Yet currently no book has addressed all aspects of functional microarrays in a coherent and integrated fashion. Until now. Meeting the need for comprehensive and authoritative information, Functional Protein Microarrays in Drug Discovery provides an up-to-date overview of the field and the background required to actually design and develop arrays or perform and analyze array experiments.The book is divided into five main sections that address critical aspects of the field. The first focuses on the generation of functional protein content, the first and perhaps most challenging aspect of protein microarrays. The second section describes ‘standard’ and state-of-the-art fabrication methods, focusing on issues of particular significance to functional protein microarrays. Similarly, the third section reviews current and next generation approaches to assay detection. The fourth and largest section, dedicated to applications, spans the breadth of published applications, from biomolecular interaction discovery and characterization to humoral response biomarker profiling, enzyme substrate identification and drug discovery. The final section addresses fundamental computational issues including image and data analysis as well as data visualization. While the field’s early successes have set the stage for rapid growth, it is not without challenges. Indeed, challenges are to be expected in a fast-moving, interdisciplinary endeavor such as this, where molecular biology, protein chemistry, bioinformatics, engineering, and physical sciences intersect. As the first integrated reference for functional protein microarrays, this book helps you not only meet the challenges but also excel in your research.X. Y. Zhu, one of the contributors to this text, was recently featured in an article in Austin's The Statesman. Daniel E. Levy, editor of the Drug Discovery Series, is the founder of DEL BioPharma, a consulting service for drug discovery programs. He also maintains a blog that explores organic chemistry.

The drug discovery and development process is getting longer, more expensive, and no better. The industry suffers from the same clinical attrition and safety-related market withdrawal rates today as it did 20 years ago. Industrialization of Drug Discovery: From Target Selection Through Lead Optimization scrutinizes these problems in detail, contrasting the promise of technology and industrialization with the challenges of using the tools available to their best advantage. The book explores early successes, examines the current state of the art, and provides a strategic analysis of the issues currently facing drug discovery.Introducing the historical background and current status of the industry, the book delineates the basic tenets underlying modern drug discovery, how they have evolved, and their use in various approaches and strategies. It examines, in detail, the regulations, requirements, guidelines, and draft documents that guide so many FDA actions. The editor devotes the remainder of the discussion to industrialization, compound and knowledge management functions, the drug screening process, collaboration, and finally, ethical issues. Drawing on real-life, from-the-trenches examples, the book elucidates a new approach to drug discovery and development. This modern-day, back-to-basics approach includes three steps: understand the science, unravel the story, and then intelligently apply the technology, bringing to bear the entire armamentarium of industrialization techniques, not just automation, to the discovery process. Using these steps, you can meet the goals of more specific targets, more selective compounds, and decreased cycle times. In effect, you can look for a bigger needle in a smaller haystack.Daniel E. Levy, editor of the Drug Discovery Series, is the founder of DEL BioPharma, a consulting service for drug discovery programs. He also maintains a blog that explores organic chemistry.

Phage Display in Biotechnology and Drug Discovery, Second Edition provides a comprehensive view of the impact and promise of phage display in drug discovery and biotechnology. Building on the success of its previous edition, the book discusses current theories, principles, and methods in the field and demonstrates applications for peptide phage display, protein phage display, and the development of novel antibodies. The book provides readers with an overview of the amazing breadth of the impact that phage display technology has had on the study of proteins in general as well as the development of proteins. It will be a valuable resource for those interested in using phage display and recombinant antibodies in basic research and drug discovery.Key Features:Describes the basic principles of phage display and the methods and systems that have been developed for key applicationsOutlines applications for peptide phage display in the development of vaccines and high- throughput screens as well as the exploration of protein–protein interactions and enzyme substrate characteristics Details the use of phage display in the engineering of protein stability, the identification and mapping of protein–protein interactions, and the development of catalysts Provides broad coverage of the impact of phage display technology on the development of protein therapeutics Presents expert opinions on future challenges in the field

Scientists can use molecular profiling microarrays to compare healthy cells with their diseased counterparts and develop gene-specific treatments. Finding the best way to interpret original profiling data into accurate trends, however, continues to drive the development of normalization algorithms and software tools.Methods in Microarray Normalization compiles the most useful and novel techniques for the first time into a single, organized source. Experts in the field provide a diverse view of the mathematical processes that are important in normalizing data and avoiding inherent systematic biases. They also review useful software, including discussions on key algorithms, comparative data, and download locations. The book discusses the use of early normalization techniques for new profiling methods and includes strategies for assessing the utility of various normalization algorithms. It presents the latest microarray innovations from companies such as Agilent, Affymetrix, and GeneGo as well as new normalization methods for protein and CGH arrays, many of which are applicable for antibody, microRNA, methylation, and siRNA arrays. Methods in Microarray Normalization provides scientists with a complete resource on the most effective tools available for maximizing microarray data in biochemical research. Daniel E. Levy, editor of the Drug Discovery Series, is the founder of DEL BioPharma, a consulting service for drug discovery programs. He also maintains a blog that explores organic chemistry.

Phage Display in Biotechnology and Drug Discovery, Second Edition provides a comprehensive view of the impact and promise of phage display in drug discovery and biotechnology. Building on the success of its previous edition, the book discusses current theories, principles, and methods in the field and demonstrates applications for peptide phage display, protein phage display, and the development of novel antibodies. The book provides readers with an overview of the amazing breadth of the impact that phage display technology has had on the study of proteins in general as well as the development of proteins. It will be a valuable resource for those interested in using phage display and recombinant antibodies in basic research and drug discovery.

In the fiercely competitive pharmaceutical marketplace, your organization cannot afford to spend excess dollars developing drugs that will fail to get FDA approval or have profoundly poor characteristics. Biochips as Pathways to Drug Discovery takes a comprehensive look at how the industry faces these challenges, using new technologies such as biochips to reduce the cost of drug discovery and improve drug safety. The book explores the tools and skills required at each step of the discovery process when using biochips to determine biological outcomes.The authors provide an in-depth review of the clinical and pharmacogenomic relevance of biochips, ChIP-chip assays, and high-throughput approaches. They discuss how biochips are used to develop biomarkers in the drug discovery process, primarily for gene expression profiling and Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) analysis. The book includes coverage of experimental theory, quality control, clinical laboratory sampling considerations, database concepts, industrial laboratory design, and the analysis of the resultant large data sets. It discusses the application of biochips to the study of malaria, toxicogenomics, and SNPs, as well as intellectual property and market overviews. The book concludes with a comprehensive overview of how these chips are employed from early target discovery through preclinical toxicology and on through to pharmacogenomic and proof of concept studies in humans. Written in an easily accessible style, the breadth of coverage introduces the subject to those new to the field, while the depth of coverage forms a foundation for future work. The book gives you the knowledge required to leverage the technology into bona fide discoveries. Daniel E. Levy, editor of the Drug Discovery Series, is the founder of DEL BioPharma, a consulting service for drug discovery programs. He also maintains a blog that explores organic chemistry.

The need to screen targets faster and more efficiently, coupled with advances in parallel and multiplex chemical synthesis, has contributed to the increasing use of multiwell assays for drug discovery. The Handbook of Assay Development in Drug Discovery is a reference that describes the complete armament of tools currently available for performing various assay techniques.Featuring contributions from assay developers in the pharmaceutical and vendor communities, the book presents descriptions of methods, laboratory guidelines and protocols used to perform such methods, specific examples of each assay system, and troubleshooting tools. The handbook describes biochemical assay classes as well as non-class specific assay development for cell-based assays. It covers a wide range of target classes—including kinases, proteases, nuclear receptors, and GPCRs—and describes currently employed methods and assay types, such as radioligand binding assays, image analysis assays, enzyme fragment complementation, and bioluminescent and fluorescent-based assays. Designed as a guide to running an assay from start to finish, the Handbook of Assay Development in Drug Discovery is an ideal bench top companion for discovery researchers, laboratory managers, academics, and other scientists involved in drug discovery screening, lead profiling, therapeutic target evaluation, and assay development and implementation in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Daniel E. Levy, editor of the Drug Discovery Series, is the founder of DEL BioPharma, a consulting service for drug discovery programs. He also maintains a blog that explores organic chemistry.

The pharmaceutical industry relies on numerous well-designed experiments involving high-throughput techniques and in silico approaches to analyze potential drug targets. These in silico methods are often predictive, yielding faster and less expensive analyses than traditional in vivo or in vitro procedures.In Silico Technologies in Drug Target Identification and Validation addresses the challenge of testing a growing number of new potential targets and reviews currently available in silico approaches for identifying and validating these targets. The book emphasizes computational tools, public and commercial databases, mathematical methods, and software for interpreting complex experimental data. The book describes how these tools are used to visualize a target structure, identify binding sites, and predict behavior. World-renowned researchers cover many topics not typically found in most informatics books, including functional annotation, siRNA design, pathways, text mining, ontologies, systems biology, database management, data pipelining, and pharmacogenomics. Covering issues that range from prescreening target selection to genetic modeling and valuable data integration, In Silico Technologies in Drug Target Identification and Validation is a self-contained and practical guide to the various computational tools that can accelerate the identification and validation stages of drug target discovery and determine the biological functionality of potential targets more effectively. Daniel E. Levy, editor of the Drug Discovery Series, is the founder of DEL BioPharma, a consulting service for drug discovery programs. He also maintains a blog that explores organic chemistry.

Since the pioneering pharmacotherapy for treatment of schizophrenia in the 1950s by antipsychotics, only a few major innovations have been made, pointing to a general stagnation in the field of pharmacology of schizophrenia. Drug Discovery for Schizophrenia covers new insights in the field of schizophrenia with an aim to advance the understanding of scientists and clinicians in this area and to fuel drug discovery. The book outlines a change in the way schizophrenia is treated by moving away from focusing only on treating symptoms in patients. Innovative drugs emerge from deeper comprehension of the pathological processes that emerge earlier in life, hence, providing strategies for preventative therapy to alter the course of this mental disorder. Amongst other current topics, the book covers new findings in genetics and epigenetics, progress in animal models for schizophrenia and the usage of induced pluripotent stem cells. The combination of these important areas benefit psychiatric neuroscience, filling the gaps in the knowledge of neurobiology of schizophrenia and providing novel perspectives for future drug development.

One strategy to expedite the discovery of new drugs, a process that is somewhat slow and serendipitous, is the identification and use of privileged scaffolds. This book covers the history of the discovery and use of privileged scaffolds and addresses the various classes of these important molecular fragments. The first of the benzodiazepines, a class of drugs that is powerful for treating anxiety, may not have been discovered had it not been for a chance experiment on the contents of a discarded flask found during a lab clean-up. Some years later, scientists discovered that benzodiazepine derivatives were also effective in treating other diseases. This class of molecules was the first to be described as privileged in the sense that it is especially effective at altering the course of disease. Other privileged molecular structures have since been discovered, and since these compounds are so effective at interacting with numerous classes of proteins, they may be an effective starting point to look for new drugs against the supposedly “undruggable” proteins. Following introductory chapters presenting an overview, a historical perspective and the theoretical background and findings, main chapters describe the structure of privileged structures in turn and discuss major drug classes associated with them and their syntheses. This book provides comprehensive coverage of the subject through chapters contributed by expert authors from both academia and industry and will be an excellent reference source for medicinal chemists of a range of disciplines and experiences.

Understanding and quantifying the effects of membrane transporters within the human body is essential for modulating drug safety and drug efficacy. In this first volume on Drug Transporters, the current knowledge and techniques in the transporter sciences and their relations to drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics are comprehensively reviewed. The second volume of the book is specifically dedicated to emerging science and technologies, highlighting potential areas for future advances within the drug transporter field.The topics covered in both volumes ensure that all relevant aspects of transporters are described across the drug development process, from in silico models and preclinical tools through to the potential impact of transporters in the clinic. Contributions are included from expert leaders in the field, at-the-bench industrial scientists, renowned academics and international regulators. Case studies and emerging developments are highlighted, together with the merits and limitations of the available methods and tools, and extensive references to reviews on specific in-depth topics are also included for those wishing to pursue their knowledge further. As such, this text serves as an essential handbook of information for postgraduate students, academics, industrial scientists and regulators who wish to understand the role of transporters in absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion processes. In addition, it is also a useful reference tool on the models and calculations necessary to predict their effect on human pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

Oncogenic transcription factors are an increasingly important target for anticancer therapies. Inhibiting these transcription factors could allow tumour cells to be "reprogrammed", leading to apoptosis or differentiation from the malignant phenotype. As the use of kinase inhibitors is gradually declining, transcription factor inhibition is the next hot topic for oncology research and merits much attention. This book highlights recent progress in the development of small-molecule inhibitors of oncogenic transcription factors. It also presents the evidence that this important protein class can be modulated in a number of ways to develop novel classes of therapeutic agents. The broad range of aspects covered by the book is noteworthy and renders it enormously valuable. This title serves as a unique reference book for postgraduates, academic researchers and practitioners working in the fields of biochemistry, biotechnology, cell and molecular biology and bio-inorganic chemistry.

Recent years have seen a resurgence of antibiotic drug discovery. This book brings together the relevant information to assess the state-of-the-art. It identifies and elaborates the most recent and compelling strategies for antibiotic drug discovery with a primary focus on new targets, mechanisms and molecular entities. Addressing the need for continued investment in antibiotic drug development, the book provides a point of reference for the rapidly expanding infectious disease research community.In addition to its attention on new targets, the book focusses on the medicinal chemistry and chemistry of the targets. Within this framework, chapters from leading researchers in academia and industry address findings in important areas such as biofilm production, narrow spectrum antibiotics and novel antibacterials from previously uncultured soil bacteria.This book will be a useful resource for postgraduate students and researchers in medicinal chemistry wishing to understand the latest approaches to antibiotic drug discovery.

Aging is a natural phenomenon that is peculiar to all living things. However, accumulating findings indicate that senescence could be postponed or prevented by certain approaches. Substantial evidence has emerged supporting the possibility of radical human health and lifespan extension, in particular through pharmacological modulation of aging. A number of natural dietary ingredients and synthetic drugs have been assumed to have geroprotective potential. In the development of anti-aging therapeutics, several cell, insect, and animal models may provide useful starting points prior to human studies.This book provides an overview of current research aimed to search for life-extending medications and describes pharmacological aspects of anti-aging medicine. Readers are introduced to the fascinating historical background of geroprotection in the first chapter. In-depth information on models for investigating geroprotective drugs precedes a section covering anti-aging properties of pharmaceutical compounds, such as calorie restriction mimetics, autophagy inducers, senolytics and mitochondrial antioxidants. Finally, strategies to translate discoveries from aging research into drugs and healthcare policy perspectives on anti-ageing medicine are provided to give a complete picture of the field.A timely and carefully edited collection of chapters by leading researchers in the field, this book will be a fascinating and useful resource for pharmacologists, gerontologists and any scientifically interested person wishing to know more about the current status of research into anti-aging remedies, challenges and opportunities.

Although the concept of allosterism has been known for over half a century, its application in drug discovery has exploded in recent years. The emergence of novel technologies that enable molecular-level ligand-receptor interactions to be studied in studied in unprecedented detail has driven this trend. This book, written by the leaders in this young research area, describes the latest developments in allosterism for drug discovery.Bringing together research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines, Allosterism in Drug Discovery is a key reference for academics and industrialists interested in understanding allosteric interactions. The book provides an in-depth review of research using small molecules as chemical probes and drug candidates that interact allosterically with proteins of relevance to life sciences and human disease. Knowledge of these interactions can then be applied in the discovery of the novel therapeutics of the future.This book will be useful for people working in all disciplines associated with drug discovery in academia or industry, as well as postgraduate students who may be working in the design of allosteric modulators.

Molecular imaging of drugs or drug carriers is a valuable tool that can provide important information on spatiotemporal distribution of drugs, allowing improved drug distribution at  target sites. Chemically labelled drugs can be used to both diagnose and treat diseases. This book introduces the topic of image guided drug delivery and covers the latest imaging techniques and developments in theranostics, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of this field as well as its translational ability. These technologies and techniques hold potential for individualised, safer therapies. The book introduces the chemistry behind labelling drugs or drug carriers for imaging. It then discusses current scientific progress in the discovery and development of theranostic agents as well as the latest advances in triggered drug delivery. Novel imaging techniques that can be combined with therapeutics are presented, as well as results and findings from early clinical trials. This text will provide postgraduates and researchers in various disciplines associated with drug discovery, including chemistry, device engineering, oncology, neurology, cardiology, imaging, and nanoscience, an overview of this important field where several disciplines have been combined to improve treatments. Readers will be introduced to techniques that can be translated to the clinic and be applied widely.

With potentially high specificity and low toxicity, biologicals offer promising alternatives to small-molecule drugs. Peptide therapeutics have again become the focus of innovative drug development efforts backed up by a resurgence of venture funds and small biotechnology companies. What does it take to develop a peptide-based medicine? What are the key challenges and how are they overcome? What are emerging therapeutics for peptide modalities? This book answers these questions with a holistic story from molecules to medicine, combining the themes of design, synthesis and clinical applications of peptide-based therapeutics and biomarkers. Chapters are written and edited by leaders in the field from industry and academia and they cover the pharmacokinetics of peptide therapeutics, attributes necessary for commercially successful metabolic peptides, medicinal chemistry strategies for the design of peptidase-resistant peptide analogues, disease classes for which peptide therapeutic are most relevant, and regulatory issues and guidelines.The critical themes covered provide essential background information on what it takes to develop peptide-based medicine from a chemistry perspective and views on the future of peptide drugs. This book will be a valuable resource not only as a reference book for the researcher engaged in academic and pharmaceutical setting, from basic research to manufacturing and from organic chemistry to biotechnology, but also a valuable resource to graduate students to understand discovery and development process for peptide-based medicine.

Biophysical techniques are used in many key stages of the drug discovery process including in screening for new receptor ligands, in characterising drug mechanisms, and in validating data from biochemical and cellular assays. This book provides an overview of the biophysical methods applied in drug discovery today, including traditional techniques and newer developments. Perspectives from academia and industry across a spectrum of techniques are brought together in a single volume. Small and biotherapeutic approaches are covered and strengths and limitations of each technique are presented. Case studies illustrate the application of each technique in real applied examples. Finally, the book covers recent developments in areas such as electron microscopy with discussions of their possible impact on future drug discovery.This is a go-to volume for biophysicists, analytical chemists and medicinal chemists providing a broad overview of techniques of contemporary interest in drug discovery.

The number of available synthetic methods can be overwhelming. In order to create novel motifs and templates which confer new and potentially valuable drug-like properties, it is important to know which synthetic methodologies will give the best results. This two-volume set of books provides both academic and industrial perspectives on key reactions giving the reader an excellent overview of the techniques used in modern synthesis. Reaction types are conveniently framed in the context of their value to industry and the challenges and limitations of methodologies are discussed with relevant illustrative examples. Moreover, key opportunities in expanding chemical space are presented, including the increasingly important syntheses that introduce three-dimensional molecular shape. Volume 1 focusses on transition metal mediated methods used in industry and volume 2 covers further valuable methods, such as fluorination, C-N bond formation and asymmetric reactions. Edited and authored by leading scientists from both academia and industry, this set of books will be a valuable reference for all chemists involved in drug discovery as well as postgraduate students in medicinal chemistry.

Understanding and quantifying the effects of membrane transporters within the human body is essential for modulating drug safety and drug efficacy. This two volume set of books comprehensively reviews current knowledge and techniques in the transporter sciences and their relations to drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics. The second volume is specifically dedicated to emerging science and technologies, highlighting potential areas for future advances within the drug transporter field.The topics covered in this set of books ensure that all relevant aspects of transporters are described across the drug development process, from in silico models and preclinical tools through to the potential impact of transporters in the clinic. Contributions are included from expert leaders in the field, at-the-bench industrial scientists, renowned academics and international regulators. Case studies and emerging developments are highlighted, together with the merits and limitations of the available methods and tools, and extensive references to reviews on specific in-depth topics are also included for those wishing to pursue their knowledge further. As such, this text serves as an essential handbook of information for postgraduate students, academics, industrial scientists and regulators who wish to understand the role of transporters in absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion processes. In addition, it is also a useful reference tool on the models and calculations necessary to predict their effect on human pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

For human health, leishmaniasis is among the most important protozoan diseases, superseded only by malaria. Globally, 10 to 12 million people are infected with 1.5 million new cases every year. The development of cheaper new drugs is urgently needed for this neglected disease that is developing resistance to current treatments. Chemotherapy remains the only treatment option for the bulk of patients. However, this is largely unaffordable for most. In the past three years numerous advances in drug discovery have been made for treating this disease by exploiting diverging metabolic pathways between the Leishmania enzymes and their hosts, using nanotechnology to target the immune cell phagolysosomes where Leishmania resides.Drug Discovery for Leishmaniasis aims to provide a perspective of the current treatments and their challenges, blended with the emerging strategies and methodologies that will drive new target appraisals and drug developments, as well as addressing the molecular basis of resistance in Leishmania.Recent studies have shown that leishmaniasis affects some of the poorest people in the world, with 95% of fatal cases occurring in only 6 countries. With the WHO goal of eliminating this public health problem in the South-east Asia Region by 2020, this book will be important for anyone who is interested in neglected tropical diseases.

Sight loss and blindness is a very prevalent cause of disability. Retinal diseases leading to visual loss affect many people worldwide and the search for adequate drugs remains a challenge and an important area of interest in the drug discovery field. This book addresses approaches to the treatment of retinal diseases, targeting common processes and components. Despite their causative origins, which comprise genetic dystrophies, age-related degenerations, as well as pathologies associated with other diseases, a neurodegenerative component appears, sooner or later, in the course of the disease. As is the case for most neurodegenerative diseases, the available treatments are far from satisfactory. The aim of this book is to highlight research and drug development efforts in targeting such common processes as a potential path to provide treatments to the millions of affected people.

A rise in the number of young and old patients suffering from a stroke or traumatic brain injury has led to the need for better drug development and treatment, as well as diagnosis and prevention of ischemic stroke and traumatic brain injury. This book provides a comprehensive overview of scientific advancements in these areas.Chapters provide the latest knowledge in neuroscience, biotechnology, and personalized medicine applicable to acute brain injuries. Development of neuroprotective drugs is treated in detail. Chemical biomarkers for detection, imaging and preventative strategies are covered to provide medicinal chemists with a broad view of translational aspects of the field. This book will be useful to postgraduate students and researchers in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology as well as specialists in the acute brain injury field.

Antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs) represent one of the most promising and exciting areas of anticancer drug discovery. Five ADCs are now approved in the US and EU [i.e., ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla™), brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris™), inotuzumab ozogamicin (Besponsa™), gemtuzumab ozogamicin (Mylotarg™) and moxetumomab pasudotox-tdfk (Lumoxiti®)] and over 70 others are in various stages of clinical development, with impressive interim results being reported for many. The technology is based on the concept of delivering a cytotoxic payload selectively to cancer cells by attaching it to an antibody targeted to antigens on the cell surfaces. This approach has several advantages including the ability to select patients as likely responders based on the presence of antigen on the surface of their cancer cells and a wider therapeutic index, given that ADC targeting enables a more efficient delivery of cytotoxic agents to cancer cells than can be achieved by conventional chemotherapy, thus minimising systemic toxicity.Although there are many examples of antibodies that have been developed for this purpose, along with numerous linker technologies used to attach the cytotoxic agent to the antibody, there is presently a relatively small number of payload molecules in clinical use. The purpose of this book is to describe the variety of payloads used to date, along with a discussion of their advantages and disadvantages and to provide information on novel payloads at the research stage that may be used clinically in the future.

Kinase inhibition remains an area of significant interest, and growing importance, across academia and the pharmaceutical industry. There are now many marketed drugs that target kinases and a significant number of compounds are currently in various stages of clinical development. This book is a forward-looking analysis of a number of key areas for kinase inhibition in the coming years and builds on the first volume. This includes topics such as screening approaches to target kinases along with different modes of inhibition such as allosteric and covalent. Novel approaches such as macrocyclisation are considered along with how the properties of kinase inhibitors have evolved, including the potential for brain penetration. Recent areas of great importance also covered include cutting edge molecular modelling approaches and the importance of kinase mutations. The evolving biology of kinases has also resulted in increased interest in the immuno-oncology area and also pseudokinases as a target family. As with the first volume the book finishes with a forward looking view of how research against this fascinating target class may evolve.

New genomic information has revealed the crucial role that protein–protein interactions (PPIs) play in regulating numerous cellular functions. Aberrant forms of these interactions are common in numerous diseases and thus PPIs have emerged as a vast class of critical drug targets. Despite the importance of PPIs in biology, it has been extremely challenging to convert targets into therapeutics and targeting PPIs had long been considered a very difficult task. However, over the past decade the field has advanced with increasing growth in the number of successful PPI regulators. Protein–Protein Interaction Regulators surveys the latest advances in the structural understanding of PPIs as well as recent developments in modulator discovery.

The sequencing of the human genome and subsequent elucidation of the molecular pathways that are important in the pathology of disease have provided unprecedented opportunities for the development of new therapeutics. Nucleic acid-based drugs have emerged in recent years to yield extremely promising candidates for drug therapy to a wide range of diseases. Advances in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics is a comprehensive review of the latest advances in the field, covering the background of the development of nucleic acids for therapeutic purposes to the array of drug development approaches currently being pursued using antisense, RNAi, aptamer, immune modulatory and other synthetic oligonucleotides. Nucleic acid therapeutics is a field that has been continually innovating to meet the challenges of drug discovery and development; bringing contributions together from leaders at the forefront of progress, this book depicts the many approaches currently being pursued in both academia and industry. A go-to volume for medicinal chemists, Advances in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics provides a broad overview of techniques of contemporary interest in drug discovery.

The Medicinal Chemist’s Guide to Solving ADMET Challenges summarizes a series of design strategies and tactics that have been successfully employed across pharmaceutical and academic laboratories to solve common ADMET issues. These are exemplified with a curated collection of concrete examples displayed in a highly visual “table-of-contents” style format, allowing readers to rapidly identify the most promising approaches applicable to their own challenges. Each ADMET parameter is introduced in a concise yet comprehensive manner and includes background, relevance and screening strategies. Medicinal chemistry knowledge of how best to modify molecular structure to solve ADMET issues is challenging to retrieve from the literature, public databases and even corporate data warehouses. The Medicinal Chemist’s Guide to Solving ADMET Challenges addresses this gap by presenting state-of-the-art design strategies put together by a global group of experienced medicinal chemists and ADMET experts across academia and the pharmaceutical industry.