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Drug Design: Cutting Edge Approaches Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 2003, Vol 46, No 7, p 1277-1278
Drug
Design. Cutting Edge Approaches. Edited by Darren R. Flower.
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It is one of life's pleasures to return to a field that you once knew intimately and to note what astonishing progress has been made in your absence. This compact little book from the Royal Society of Chemistry packs a lot into its 192 pages, not the least of which is an insightful preface by the editor Darren Flower. It is the fruit of the first of a series of one-day meetings inaugurated in March 2001 by the Royal Society of Chemistry to address molecular informatics in drug design, which involved several renowned speakers from both British academia and the international pharmaceutical industry. Some of them were unfortunately unable to contribute to the book, but their lecture topics are reviewed by other contributors including three by the editor. There are only eight chapters, covering an introduction to molecular informatics, high-throughput X-ray crystallography, virtual techniques for lead generation and optimization, identification and modeling of G-protein receptors, physical organic chemistry in drug design, and computational vaccine design. The book is liberally illustrated, with many black and white drawings and photographs as well as numerous chemical structures. There is a brief but adequate subject index. Despite excellent references from 1833 through 2002, there is no author index. The stated aim of the proceedings from these Royal Society of Chemistry meetings is to balance technical accuracy with accessibility and readability for the non-specialist. However, while most chapters are less than 20 pages, the balance of the book is uneven; one chapter is as short as 7 pages and others are around 50 pages, leaving one with a strange sense of being alternately under- and overwhelmed. |
Thus, Darren Flower's long introduction to molecular informatics is delightfully easy to read and is full of useful tips and historical anecdotes, but his concluding and only marginally shorter contribution on computational vaccine design is hard-going. The shortest chapter, by Tom Blundell on high-throughput X-ray crystallography, cries out for a longer discussion of an important topic for drug discovery. Nevertheless, the book represents a highly educative and informative trawl through many of their latest techniques to be used for lead finding and drug design. A nice touch is the constant use of actual examples to demonstrate the utility and limitations of the various methods. Focused diversity and virtual libraries may now be replacing the earlier utopian vision of potentially endless structural variations that combinatorial chemistry appeared to offer ~1030"druglike" molecules have been suggested), while virtual screening is supplementing high-throughput screening. The book is useful reading for all involved in drug discovery, be they medicinal chemists or biologists, and is an ideal primer for busy research directors. It is cheap, although the declining dollar makes it less so by the day. The second Royal Society of Chemistry meeting on this topic has already been held, and another is planned. One of the good things is the availability of all information at the Royal Society of Chemistry's Web site. Roger M Pinder |
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