Protein Based Drug Discovery

Abstract

Abstract-New drug target discovery is currently very popular with a great potential for advancing biomedical research and chemical genomics. Drug discovery is the process of discovering and designing drugs that includes target identification, target validation, lead identification, lead optimization and introduction of the new drugs to the public. G protein-coupled receptors are one of the most important drug targets. In the current scenario of drug research, approximately 60% of drug target molecules are located at the cell surface, and half of them are GPCRs. Fragment-based drug discovery is established as an alternative approach to high-throughput screening for generating novel small molecule drug candidates. Nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems have seen recent popularity due to their favorable physical, chemical, and biological properties, and great efforts have been made to target nanoDDSs to specific cellular receptors. Protein-protein interactions regulate a wide variety of important cellular pathways, and therefore represent a highly populated class of targets for drug discovery. An analysis of individual proteinprotein interaction systems has recently yielded success in the discovery of drug-like inhibitors.