Introduction to Drug Design and Discovery - Drug Design and Discovery - page 13

I.6 INDIVIDUALIZED MEDICINE AND CONCLUDING REMARKS
The mapping of the genome leads us to the identii cation of targets for therapeutic interventions, as
for example chemotherapy, not previously suspected and even allows us to dream of the possibility
of correcting genetic defects, enhancing our prospects for a longer and more healthy life, and for
devising drugs for specii c individuals. Presuming that individual variations in therapeutic response
may have a genetic origin, and thus dividing populations into subgroups with similar genetic char-
acteristics, might allow us to prescribe drugs and even dosages within these groups. This form of
individual gene typing is already possible, but would be very resource demanding as per days tech-
niques. It is likely that perplexing species differences in response to, for example, chemotherapy,
that complicates drug development, may also be understood, when the genome mapping becomes
more elaborate.
The new biological capabilities raise many new prospects and problems for drug companies and,
in general, for the society, not only scientii cally but also morally. Scientii c knowledge by itself is
morally neutral, but how it is used, is not.
In conclusion, there has never been a more exciting time to take up the study of medicinal chem-
istry. The technological developments and the amount of information will grow with increasing
speed, and scientists may eventually risk to be drowned in this multitude of possibilities. However,
the intelligent, intuitive, and skilled medicinal chemist will be able to maneuver in this ocean of
multiplicity and to continue the series of brilliant achievements by the pioneers in drug discovery
during the past century.
FURTHER READINGS
Anderson, A.C. 2003. The process of structure-based drug design. Chem. Biol . 10:787-797.
Bøgesø, K.P. 1998. Drug hunting. The medicinal chemistry of 1-piperazino-3-phenylindans and related com-
pounds. DSc Thesis, The Royal Danish School of Pharmacy, Copenhagen.
Bräuner-Osborne, H., Egebjerg, J., Nielsen, E.Ø., Madsen, U., and Krogsgaard-Larsen, P. 2000. Ligands for
glutamate receptors: Design and therapeutic prospects. J . Med. Chem . 43:2609-2645.
Ebert, B., Madsen, U., Søby, K.K., and Krogsgaard-Larsen, P. 1996. Functional partial agonism at ionotropic
excitatory amino acid receptors. Neurochem. Int . 29:309-316.
Lindsay, M.A. 2003. Target discovery. Nat. Rev. Drug Disc . 2:831-838.
Lipinsky, C.A., Lombardo, F., Dominy, B.W., and Feeney, P.J. 2001. Experimental and computational
approaches to estimate solubility and permeability in drug discovery and development settings. Adv.
Drug Del. Rev . 46:3-26.
Mitscher, L.A. 2002. Drug design and discovery: An overview. In Textbook of Drug Design and Discovery ,
P. Krogsgaard-Larsen, T. Liljefors, and U. Madsen (eds.), pp. 1-34. London: Taylor & Francis.
Patani, G.A. and LaVoie, E.J. 1996. Bioisosterism: A rational approach in drug design. Chem. Rev .
96:3147-3176.