Blog Drug Discovery

It is estimated that 85% of the human proteome is considered undruggable(1)—finding effective ligands (pharmaceuticals) to target these proteins is considered exceptionally hard, or impossible.

Here we pose that this may not be impossible! We examine what makes a protein “undruggable”, and present strategies which can be used against such targets.

Solid form informatics allows researchers to assess exciting therapeutic candidates. By analyzing intra- and intermolecular interactions, geometries, and crystal structure packing, researchers are better able to understand the challenges associated with a potential new active pharmaceutical ingredient (API)—like polymorphism and manufacturing risks—in order to ensure the best candidates progress to the next stage of the development process. In this blog, we’ll look at three key insights that the CCDC’s solid form informatics approach can tell you about your drug candidate.

In this Q&A-style blog with Mihaela D. Smilova (postgraduate researcher at the Centre for Medicines Discovery at Oxford University), learn about some of the advantages of fragment-based drug design, which she recently used for a drug design methodology called “ensemble hotspot mapping.”

In this Q&A-style blog with Dr Sharmarke Mohamed (Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Khalifa University), learn about a set of guiding principles to aid the crystallization of molecular ionic co-crystals and what such a toolkit might mean for drug discovery.

Here we highlight a paper by authors at University of Limerick who used CCDC’s Molecular Complementarity component in Mercury to predict co-crystalization—finding a 24% reduction in the benchtop experiments required to identify the same co-crystals. This is part of our series highlighting examples of​​ the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) tools in action by scientists around the world.

According to a recent article in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US approved 50 novel therapeutics in 2021. 28 are small molecules (other than peptides and radiolabelled molecules). In this blog, we look at the newly approved therapeutics available in the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD).

Every year, the World Health Organization (WHO) celebrates World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW), which aims to increase awareness of global antimicrobial resistance to help stop the emergence and spread of drug-resistant infections. The WAAW 2021 theme is “Spread Awareness, Stop Resistance.” In this blog, we look at antimicrobial structures in the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), as well as how computational and experimental chemists leverage the data to develop new therapeutics.

Our software CSD-CrossMiner matches molecules to targets through pharmacophore-based data mining. Here we explain how it’s improved in our 2021.2 CSD release.

In our 2020.1 CSD Release, we launched the Aromatics Analyser – our first feature in Mercury based on a Neural Network that leverages deep learning. The tool allows you to quantitatively assess aromatic ring interactions and their likely contribution to the stability of a crystal structure. In this blog, let’s explore why it’s so important to understand aromatic interactions using ibuprofen and benzoic acids as examples.

Here we highlight a recent paper by researchers at UBE Industries and Santen Pharmaceutical Co in which ConQuest helped identify a scaffold with a promising EP2-selective receptor agonist that may lower intraocular pressure (IOP). A prodrug of it was selected as a clinical candidate for the treatment of glaucoma.

This is part of our series highlighting examples of​​ the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) tools in action by scientists around the world.