Fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) is a method used for finding hit compounds as one strategy of hit identification (hit ID) in the drug discovery process. Fragments are small molecules with a low molecular weight (less than 250 g/mol). The FBDD technology is based on identifying these small chemical fragments which bind to the biological target, and which are then optimised into lead-like molecules (less than 400 g/mol) and finally into bioavailable drugs. Chemical diversity space of fragments is relatively small, and thus fragment libraries need only be several thousand compounds in size to provide reasonable sampling of structure space. In contrast, high throughput screening (HTS) of higher molecule weight compounds (400-600 g/mol) generally requires libraries of millions of compounds.

The hit compounds discovered by FBDD are very small, and often only weakly potent. And so, structural information and careful use of compound metrics are central elements of fragment optimisation to more potent ‘lead’ molecules. The webinar will give insight into this hit ID platform and will show how FBDD can be successfully applied for the identification of novel and potent lead compounds.

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