• Question: Where do you start when making a new drug, do you do a design for example?

    Asked by pjs09z to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 8 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      The short answer is “kind of”. One of the drugs I work on targets is a cancer drug. The cancer cells have a particular molecule (called an antigen) on their surface that normal cells don’t have. So, the drug people realised if they could make something that only affected cells with the antigen – and killed the cells in the process – then they could cure the disease. So, they came up with a 3-part molecule than had an antibody (which recognises the antigen), a cell-killing bit and a linker to bind them together. And hey, presto, there was the drug and it gets rid of the cancer cells! Some drugs also get discovered by “accident” though – have a look for penicillin on the internet if you want to find out more.

    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      Drug ‘design’ is a big field in modern medicine. If we know how a drug binds to its target protein, we can use our knowledge of chemistry to make it stick better, or minimize interactions with other proteins that might cause side effects.

      It’s doesn’t always work and there is a lot of trial and error involved in drug design. We still have to test these designed drugs, just to make sure they are still safe to use.

    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      Yes many people work on designing drugs. There is a special group at Leeds University that work with a sophisticated computer program that can model the shape of drugs and how they are expected to bind and interact with their target protein or other molecule.
      Being able to visualise what you are creating is really beneficial in drug design.

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      As said above, often at the start it’s done on computers. If you have a model of the place you want your drug to go, then you can look at the shape of where it’s meant to sit and try and design your drug to fit snugly in that space. By having different chemical charges on different parts of the drug you can make it “stickier” so it’s more likely to stay there.

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