Early phase drug discovery: cheminformatics and computational techniques in identifying lead series.

Early drug discovery processes rely on hit finding procedures followed by extensive experimental confirmation in order to select high priority hit series which then undergo further scrutiny in hit-to-lead studies. The experimental cost and the risk associated with poor selection of lead series can be greatly reduced by the use of many different computational and cheminformatic techniques to sort and prioritize compounds. We describe the steps in typical hit identification and hit-to-lead programs and then describe how cheminformatic analysis assists this process.

2,3-Diaminopyrazines as Rho kinase inhibitors.

Inhibition of rho kinase (ROCK) has been recognized as an important target for a number of diseases, including glaucoma. Herein we report SAR development around two hits from a kinase library that led to the discovery of the ROCK inhibitor compound 38. In vitro and in vivo analysis of this compound, including its effects in a monkey model of glaucoma will be discussed.

Docking and scoring in virtual screening for drug discovery: methods and applications.

Computational approaches that 'dock' small molecules into the structures of macromolecular targets and 'score' their potential complementarity to binding sites are widely used in hit identification and lead optimization. Indeed, there are now a number of drugs whose development was heavily influenced by or based on structure-based design and screening strategies, such as HIV protease inhibitors. Nevertheless, there remain significant challenges in the application of these approaches, in particular in relation to current scoring schemes.