Small Molecule Chemistry's "Limited Utility"?

Over at LifeSciVC, guest blogger Jonathan Montagu talks about small molecules in drug discovery, and how we might move beyond them. Many of the themes he hits have come up around here, understandably - figuring why (and how) some huge molecules manage to have good PK properties, exploiting "natural-product-like" chemical space (again, if we can figure out a good way to do that), working with unusual mechanisms (allosteric sites, covalent inhibitors and probes), and so on. Well worth a read, even if he's more sanguine about structure-based drug discovery than I am. Most people are, come to think of it.

His take is very similar to what I've been telling people in my "state of drug discovery" presentations (at Illinois, most recently) - that we medicinal chemists need to stretch our definitions and move into biomolecule/small molecule hybrids and the like. These things need the techniques of organic chemistry, and we should be the people supplying them. Montagu goes even further than I do, saying that ". . .I believe that small molecule chemistry, as traditionally defined and practiced, has limited utility in today’s world." That may or may not be correct at the moment, but I'm willing to bet that it's going to become more and more correct in the future. We should plan accordingly.

Source: In the Pipeline - March 20, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Drug Industry History Source Type: blogs