Small... Large... Sources of Drugs
Small Molecules as our Drugs I nitially, most drugs are small organic molecules, typically of molecular weight less than 500 Da. Screening of a "library" of chemicals to find the compound with your features of interest is the usual approach for invention of small molecule drugs. These libraries contain millions of compounds which are screened according their interaction with the specific target or its property to produce a biological response. Some of the more than 3,000 drugs at Johns Hopkins. Credit (Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times) From serendipitous discovery to high throughput screening of libraries, drug discovery has taken a modern approach. The ideal target molecules are of human origin made via transcription and translation of human genes. The 'hit' drugs thus are to react with the human proteins itself rather than their animal counterparts. Most of the screened hits require its derivatives to be synthesised for better structure...