Protein Crystallography in the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Field

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Protein crystallography has become a mainstream analytical method in assisting the pharmaceutical chemistry field. Specific work on proteases which are instrumental in lead compound discovery have blossomed over the passed two decades as the need for Co-crystallization of target proteins with small molecules is seeing a drastic increase now that their uses in drug design have become fully apparent. Work on phosphorous cleaving and donating enzymes (Kinases and phosphatases) has also become an area of current interest as potential cancer therapy by affecting the energy yield in a cancer cell through interruption of ATP generation. “The use of protein crystallography is highly influential in structure-guided drug design as researchers can help determine the absolute stereochemistry of a compound and alter it if necessary to favour the necessary binding conformation”3.

Co-crystals:

Pharmaceutical Relevance:

Co-crystals have come up in pharmaceutical chemistry as an important and controversial topic. Although there is disagreement on the definition of what is classified as a co-crystal, their importance in pharmaceutical chemistry and X-ray crystallography is noted. Co-crystals are believed to be a crystalline structure of at least two components composed of atoms, molecules or ions. These components form a single unique crystalline structure and have proven to be quite beneficial in vitro as a medicinal delivery system.

Pharmaceutical Advancement:

Several advances on the design, growth and characterization of co-crystals have increased exponentially over the past several decades. It has only been in the past several years however, that reference to pharmaceutical chemistry has begun to flourish as the discovery that ...

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...ghout all stages of the discovery process. “One such computational approach that can go hand-in-hand with major phases of drug discovery such as “hit identification” and “hit-to-lead”; the initial phase involves the identification of a list of chemical compounds, known as ‘hits’, that ideally exhibit some degree of potency and specificity against the target. Whereas, the latter engages evaluation of the screened hits to identify the promising lead molecules before proceeding toward a large-scale lead optimization”7. With drug design rapidly turning into a science of discovery time reduction and results a conglomerate of different methods are being pooled together to assist in “hit identification”. The use of bioinformaticians, systems biologists, and computational clustering methods has allowed researchers validate desired biological targets at a lightning pace.

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