No Denying It: Medicinal Chemistry Training Is in Big Trouble

Drug design education in China

With the emergence of innovative technologies, including combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening, computer-aided drug design (CADD), artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, the importance of drug design in the field of drug discovery and development is increasing. Additionally, education in drug design plays an important role in the training of pharmaceutical talent. Starting with undergraduates, cultivating pharmaceutical design thinking, developing innovation and creativity, and establishing an interdisciplinary knowledge system will not only provide students with a solid knowledge basis but also promote the development of the pharmaceutical industry in China. This article presents the current status of pharmaceutical education and the distribution of drug design courses in China and summarizes the employment prospects of graduates, thus providing valuable references and evidence for global pharmaceutical design education.

On drug discovery against infectious diseases and academic medicinal chemistry contributions

This perspective is an attempt to document the problems that medicinal chemists are facing in drug discovery. It is also trying to identify relevant/possible, research areas in which academics can have an impact and should thus be the subject of grant calls. Accordingly, it describes how hit discovery happens, how compounds to be screened are selected from available chemicals and the possible reasons for the recurrent paucity of useful/exploitable results reported. This is followed by the successful hit to lead stories leading to recent and original antibacterials which are, or about to be, used in human medicine. Then, illustrated considerations and suggestions are made on the possible inputs of academic medicinal chemists. This starts with the observation that discovering a “good” hit in the course of a screening campaign still rely on a lot of luck – which is within the reach of academics –, that the hit to lead process requires a lot of chemistry and that if public–private partnerships can be important throughout these stages, they are absolute requirements for clinical trials. Concerning suggestions to improve the current hit success rate, one academic input in organic chemistry would be to identify new and pertinent chemical space, design synthetic accesses to reach these and prepare the corresponding chemical libraries. Concerning hit to lead programs on a given target, if no new hits are available, previously reported leads along with new structural data can be pertinent starting points to design, prepare and assay original analogues. In conclusion, this text is an actual plea illustrating that, in many countries, academic research in medicinal chemistry should be more funded, especially in the therapeutic area neglected by the industry. At the least, such funds would provide the intensive to secure series of hopefully relevant chemical entities which appears to often lack when considering the results of academic as well as industrial screening campaigns.

Career development in fragment-based drug discovery

The pharmaceutical industry is highly reliant on researchers who not only possess the technical knowledge but also the professional skills to collaborate in drug development. To prepare future practitioners to thrive in this interdisciplinary environment, Innovative Training Networks (ITNs) have become increasingly important in doctoral training. In this piece, we explore the benefits of these ITNs in training future practitioners in drug discovery. Through a bibliometric review, we find that the top researchers in fragment-based drug discovery have a high degree of collaboration and mobility across institutes. We then investigate which aspects of the ITN training program enable PhD students to gain these skills. We find that secondments, the short-term stays that students have in partner research institutes, are useful in preparing students to have both broad knowledge of drug discovery and specialization in their field of interest. Aside from imparting technical skills, we find that the collaborative environment in ITNs enables students to communicate better and to work effectively in teams. Doctoral students benefit by being exposed to relevant experiences that they can later apply as they navigate through the complex web of relationships and competencies in the industry. We conclude by recommending best practices to further improve ITNs in the training of future practitioners.

A skills framework integrating professionally relevant medicinal chemistry proficiencies to strengthen the contemporary practice of pharmacy

OBJECTIVE

Our aim was to define a repository of competences in Medicinal Chemistry, to be developed during Pharmacy studies and expected in professional practices, while highlighting the fundamental character of the subject and its interdisciplinary links within the Pharmaceutical Sciences.

METHODS

A first version, based on both our professional and educational experience, consolidated by a review of educational articles and good practice guidelines, was obtained by following a competency-based approach. It was then completed by Medicinal Chemistry teachers in various French Pharmacy Faculties to obtain a comprehensive data set. The final version was reviewed in the light of relevant comments from 15 experts from related disciplines.

RESULTS

A comprehensive competency framework with extensive practical applications was developed.

CONCLUSIONS

This pilot study provides a teaching repository for medicinal chemistry for use by teachers of medicinal sciences. It highlights the fundamental role of the discipline within Pharmacy studies and provides links with professional practices. This repository will be useful to various teaching teams in a context of integrated disciplines and could be replicated in related disciplines.

Writing Your Next Medicinal Chemistry Article: Journal Bibliometrics and Guiding Principles for Industrial Authors

Writing scientific articles is immensely rewarding but challenging. This Perspective provides the medicinal chemist with background and advice on the art and process of writing manuscripts and complements the instructions to authors provided by journals. Included are many tips that we wish we had known when we first started writing. Bibliometric data from seven medicinal chemistry journals between 2000 and 2019 are collated including Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters and the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Although the overall number of articles has doubled, the output from 23 large pharma companies in the past decade has dropped significantly. Commentary is given on the entire process of writing original scientific articles, opinion articles, and reviews. Examples from our own papers and experience are shared including what typically motivates the writer, challenges commonly encountered, and how we find time to write. Finally, the benefits derived from much wider publishing of industrial medicinal chemistry are described.

Journeying through the Field of Medicinal Chemistry: Perspectives from Graduate Researchers

The training of new medicinal chemists is vital to the future of the field, and as graduate students at this critical stage, we are uniquely positioned to comment on our training. Herein, we discuss the perspectives from graduate researchers before, during, and after graduate school by utilizing survey data obtained from five medicinal chemistry programs in the Midwest and recent alumni of the University of Minnesota. We also reflect on the female perspective within the field of medicinal chemistry. Finally, we offer recommendations to both students and faculty in the hopes of helping future generations succeed in the field.

Are We Opening the Door to a New Era of Medicinal Chemistry or Being Collapsed to a Chemical Singularity?

The paradigm of "drug-like-ness" dramatically altered the behavior of the medicinal chemistry community for a long time. In recent years, scientists have empirically found a significant increase in key properties of drugs that have moved structures closer to the periphery or the outside of the rule-of-five "cage". Herein, we show that for the past decade, the number of molecules claimed in patent records by major pharmaceutical companies has dramatically decreased, which may lead to a "chemical singularity". New compounds containing fragments with increased 3D complexity are generally larger, slightly more lipophilic, and more polar. A core difference between this study and recently published papers is that we consider the nature and quality of sp³-rich frameworks rather than sp³ count. We introduce the original descriptor MCE-18, which stands for medicinal chemistry evolution, 2018, and this measure can effectively score molecules by novelty in terms of their cumulative sp³ complexity.

Replacement of a Naphthalene Scaffold in Kelch-like ECH-Associated Protein 1 (KEAP1)/Nuclear Factor (Erythroid-derived 2)-like 2 (NRF2) Inhibitors

Activators of nuclear factor-erythroid 2-related factor 2 (NRF2) could lead to promising therapeutics for prevention and treatment of oxidative stress and inflammatory disorders. Ubiquitination and subsequent degradation of the transcription factor NRF2 is mediated by Kelch-like ECH-associated protein-1 (KEAP1). Inhibition of the KEAP1/NRF2 interaction with small molecules leads to NRF2 activation. Previously, we and others described naphthalene-based NRF2 activators, but the 1,4-diaminonaphthalene scaffold may not represent a drug-like scaffold. Paying particular attention to aqueous solubility, metabolic stability, potency, and mutagenicity, we modified a previously known, naphthalene-based nonelectrophilic NRF2 activator to give a series of non-naphthalene and heterocyclic scaffolds. We found that, compared to previously reported naphthalene-based compounds, a 1,4-isoquinoline scaffold provides a better mutagenic profile without sacrificing potency, stability, or solubility.

Automating drug discovery

Small-molecule drug discovery can be viewed as a challenging multidimensional problem in which various characteristics of compounds - including efficacy, pharmacokinetics and safety - need to be optimized in parallel to provide drug candidates. Recent advances in areas such as microfluidics-assisted chemical synthesis and biological testing, as well as artificial intelligence systems that improve a design hypothesis through feedback analysis, are now providing a basis for the introduction of greater automation into aspects of this process. This could potentially accelerate time frames for compound discovery and optimization and enable more effective searches of chemical space. However, such approaches also raise considerable conceptual, technical and organizational challenges, as well as scepticism about the current hype around them. This article aims to identify the approaches and technologies that could be implemented robustly by medicinal chemists in the near future and to critically analyse the opportunities and challenges for their more widespread application.

Unusual Undergraduate Training in Medicinal Chemistry in Collaboration between Academia and Industry

Globalization has driven new paradigms for drug discovery and development. Activities previously carried out predominantly in the United States, Europe, and Japan are now carried out globally. This has caused considerable change in large pharma including how medicinal chemists are trained. Described here is the training of chemistry undergraduates in medicinal chemistry (as practiced in industry) in two modules developed in collaboration between the University of Nottingham (UoN) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The students complete several design-synthesize-test iterations on medicinal chemistry projects where they carry out the design and synthesis, and GSK tests the compounds. Considerable emphasis is placed on standard design properties used within industry. The modules are popular with the students and usually oversubscribed. An unexpected benefit has been the opportunities that have emerged with research and commercial potential. Graduate and postgraduate training of medicinal chemists at GSK is also briefly described.