Rational Drug Discovery

Rational Drug Discovery Drug companies are continuously discovering new compounds to add to the pharmaceutical world. Rational drug discovery, or drug design, has provided a great advantage to finding new medications compared to older methods of discovery. With years of guesstimating and predicting how to create the perfect prescription, drugs have been identified in numerous ways. Drugs have been discovered and named through multiple encounters of trial-and-error or with simple luck. Thorough comparisons, predictions, multiple encounters of trial-and-error all compile to complete the complicated phases of rational drug discovery. Rational drug discovery is rather known as drug design, which is the process of finding new medications based …show more content…
The begging of rational drug discovery is known as cloning, which is purification and structure determination of the protein or nucleic acid(ScienceDirect). The determination is established by x-rays or homology modeling(wiseGEEK). During the second step of the design cycle, the structure of the new target is obtained due to the lead from the first step(ScienceDirect). A target is a bio-molecule involved in signaling or metabolic pathways, that are specific to disease process by protein-protein or protein-nucleic acid interactions(Popular Science). The structure is discovered under optimization that increases the potency, which establish the sites on the compound(Popular Science). Following that, the synthesis of the optimized lead takes place. Rather known as lead generation, its where small molecules travel through and hit a screen that evaluates the identity of the lead compounds(Popular Science). Once the identity is established, the past processes repeat themselves for a year. After, the lead compounds are then optimized by multiple candidates(Quantitative Medicine). During this step, a team is hired to define the levels of potency, efficacy, selectivity, and pharmacokinetics(Management Solutions). These different levels are found through the configurations of assay’s and catalyzing(Management Solutions). This process is the most time consuming and costly to drug design. Next, the pre-clinical development occurs. During this time, a stage of research is began by professionals to collect information concerning the feasibility, iterative testing, and drug safety so they can determine whether its safe to continue with human trials of the drug(FDA). After years of pre-clinical proof including trial-and-error, the drug design process proceeds to it’s final stage. Clinical is the last step to the drug design mechanism. These trials represent the ultimate testing for the