Stressing strategic and technological solutions to medicinal chemistry challenges, this book presents methods and practices for optimizing the chemical aspects of drug discovery. Chapters discuss benefits, challenges, case studies, and industry perspectives for improving drug discovery programs with respect to quality and costs. • Focuses on small molecules and their critical role in medicinal chemistry, reviewing chemical and economic advantages, challenges, and trends in the field from industry perspectives • Discusses novel approaches and key topics, like screening collection enhancement, risk sharing, HTS triage, new lead finding approaches, diversity-oriented synthesis, peptidomimetics, natural products, and high throughput medicinal chemistry approaches • Explains how to reduce design-make-test cycle times by integrating medicinal chemistry, physical chemistry, and ADME profiling techniques • Includes descriptive case studies, examples, and applications to illustrate new technologies and provide step-by-step explanations to enable them in a laboratory setting

The topic-related series Topics in Medicinal Chemistry covers all relevant aspects of drug research, e.g. pathobiochemistry of diseases, identification and validation of (emerging) drug targets, structural biology, drug ability of targets, drug design approaches, chemogenomics, synthetic chemistry including combinatorial methods, bioorganic chemistry, natural compounds, high-throughput screening, pharmacological in vitro and in vivo investigations, drug-receptor interactions on the molecular level, structure-activity relationships, drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination, toxicology and pharmacogenomics. Medicinal chemistry is both science and art. The science of medicinal chemistry offers mankind one of its best hopes for improving the quality of life. The art of medicinal chemistry continues to challenge its practitioners with the need for both intuition and experience to discover new drugs. Hence sharing the experience of drug research is uniquely beneficial to the field of medicinal chemistry. Drug research requires interdisciplinary team-work at the interface between chemistry, biology and medicine.

Small Molecule Drug Discovery: Methods, Molecules and Applications presents the methods used to identify bioactive small molecules, synthetic strategies and techniques to produce novel chemical entities and small molecule libraries, chemoinformatics to characterize and enumerate chemical libraries, and screening methods, including biophysical techniques, virtual screening and phenotypic screening. The second part of the book gives an overview of privileged cyclic small molecules and major classes of natural product-derived small molecules, including carbohydrate-derived compounds, peptides and peptidomimetics, and alkaloid-inspired compounds. The last section comprises an exciting collection of selected case studies on drug discovery enabled by small molecules in the fields of cancer research, CNS diseases and infectious diseases. The discovery of novel molecular entities capable of specific interactions represents a significant challenge in early drug discovery. Small molecules are low molecular weight organic compounds that include natural products and metabolites, as well as drugs and other xenobiotics. When the biological target is well defined and understood, the rational design of small molecule ligands is possible. Alternatively, small molecule libraries are being used for unbiased assays for complex diseases where a target is unknown or multiple factors contribute to a disease pathology. - Outlines modern concepts and synthetic strategies underlying the building of small molecules and their chemical libraries useful for drug discovery - Provides modern biophysical methods to screening small molecule libraries, including high-throughput screening, small molecule microarrays, phenotypic screening and chemical genetics - Presents the most advanced chemoinformatics tools to characterize the structural features of small molecule libraries in terms of chemical diversity and complexity, also including the application of virtual screening approaches - Gives an overview of structural features and classification of natural product-derived small molecules, including carbohydrate derivatives, peptides and peptidomimetics, and alkaloid-inspired small molecules

Medicinal Chemistry begins with the history of the field, starting from the serendipitous use of plant preparations to current practice of design- and target-based screening methods. Written from the perspective of practicing medicinal chemists, the text covers key drug discovery activities such as pharmacokinetics and patenting, as well as the classes and structures of drug targets (receptors, enzymes, nucleic acids, and protein-protein and lipid interactions) with numerous examples of drugs acting at each type. Selected therapeutic areas include drugs to treat cancer, infectious diseases, and central nervous system disorders. Throughout the book, historical and current examples illustrate the progress to market and case studies explore the applications of concepts discussed in the text. Each chapter features a Journal Club, as well as review and application questions to enhance and test comprehension. This textbook is ideal for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students taking a one-semester survey course on medicinal chemistry and/or drug discovery, as well as scientists entering the pharmaceutical industry.

Completely revised and updated, the 2nd edition of The Handbook of Medicinal Chemistry draws together contributions from authoritative practitioners to provide a comprehensive overview of the field as well as insight into the latest trends and research. An ideal companion for students in medicinal chemistry, drug discovery and drug development, while also communicating core principles, the book places the discipline within the context of the burgeoning platform of new modalities now available to drug discovery. The book also highlights the role chemistry has to play in wider target validation and translational technologies. This is a carefully curated compilation of writing from global experts using their broad experience of medicinal chemistry, project leadership and drug discovery and development from an industry, academic and charity perspective to provide unparalleled insight into the field.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been implicated in almost every human disease phenotype, without much, if any, therapeutic consequence foremost exemplified by the failure of the so-called anti-oxidants. This book is a game changer for the field and many clinical areas such as cardiology and neurology. The term ‘oxidative stress’ is abandoned and replaced with a systems medicine and network pharmacology-based mechanistic approach to disease. The ROS-related drugs discussed here target either ROS- forming or ROS -modifying enzymes for which there is strong clinical evidence. In addition, ROS targets are included as they jointly participate in causal mechanisms of disease. This approach is transforming the ROS field and represents a breakthrough in redox medicine indicating a path to patient benefit. In the coming years more targets and drugs may be discovered, but the approach will remain the same and this book will thus become, and for many years remain, the leading reference for ROSopathies and their treatment by network pharmacology. Chapter "Soluble Guanylate Cyclase Stimulators and Activators" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The Practice of Medicinal Chemistry, Fourth Edition provides a practical and comprehensive overview of the daily issues facing pharmaceutical researchers and chemists. In addition to its thorough treatment of basic medicinal chemistry principles, this updated edition has been revised to provide new and expanded coverage of the latest technologies and approaches in drug discovery.With topics like high content screening, scoring, docking, binding free energy calculations, polypharmacology, QSAR, chemical collections and databases, and much more, this book is the go-to reference for all academic and pharmaceutical researchers who need a complete understanding of medicinal chemistry and its application to drug discovery and development. - Includes updated and expanded material on systems biology, chemogenomics, computer-aided drug design, and other important recent advances in the field - Incorporates extensive color figures, case studies, and practical examples to help users gain a further understanding of key concepts - Provides high-quality content in a comprehensive manner, including contributions from international chapter authors to illustrate the global nature of medicinal chemistry and drug development research - An image bank is available for instructors at www.textbooks.elsevier.com