Small Molecule Drug Discovery : Methods, Molecules and Applications

Small Molecule Drug Discovery: Methods, Molecules and Applications presents the methods used to identify bioactive small molecules, synthetic strategies and techniques to produce novel chemical entities and small molecule libraries, chemoinformatics to characterize and enumerate chemical libraries, and screening methods, including biophysical techniques, virtual screening and phenotypic screening. The second part of the book gives an overview of privileged cyclic small molecules and major classes of natural product-derived small molecules, including carbohydrate-derived compounds, peptides and peptidomimetics, and alkaloid-inspired compounds. The last section comprises an exciting collection of selected case studies on drug discovery enabled by small molecules in the fields of cancer research, CNS diseases and infectious diseases.

The discovery of novel molecular entities capable of specific interactions represents a significant challenge in early drug discovery. Small molecules are low molecular weight organic compounds that include natural products and metabolites, as well as drugs and other xenobiotics. When the biological target is well defined and understood, the rational design of small molecule ligands is possible. Alternatively, small molecule libraries are being used for unbiased assays for complex diseases where a target is unknown or multiple factors contribute to a disease pathology.

• Outlines modern concepts and synthetic strategies underlying the building of small molecules and their chemical libraries useful for drug discovery
• Provides modern biophysical methods to screening small molecule libraries, including high-throughput screening, small molecule microarrays, phenotypic screening and chemical genetics
• Presents the most advanced chemoinformatics tools to characterize the structural features of small molecule libraries in terms of chemical diversity and complexity, also including the application of virtual screening approaches
• Gives an overview of structural features and classification of natural product-derived small molecules, including carbohydrate derivatives, peptides and peptidomimetics, and alkaloid-inspired small molecules

Andrea Trabocchi is Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Florence, Italy, where his research and teaching activity are focused on organic synthesis and drug discovery. He received training on peptide chemistry at the Imperial College, UK, and obtained the PhD in Chemical Sciences in 2003 from the University of Florence. In 2016 he received the specialization in Clinical Biochemistry from the University of Rome-Tor Vergata. His research interests lie in the area of small molecules, including diversity-oriented synthesis, chemoinformatics and applications in cancer and CNS diseases. Previous editorial appointments included an edited book on Diversity Oriented Synthesis and an authored book on Peptidomimetics.

Elena Lenci received the Doctor Europaeus PhD in Chemical Science in 2017 from the University of Florence, after spending a research period at the University of Oxford, UK. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Chemistry, University of Florence, developing novel amino acid- and sugar-derived scaffolds for medicinal chemistry projects. In 2015 she was awarded the Reaxys - Italian Chemical Society Young Researcher Award, and in 2017 she received the International Award for Young Chemists ”NATCHEMDRUGS”. Besides her work in organic chemistry, she has served as a board-member in the Young Group of the Italian Chemical Society since 2016, and as a board member in the Chemical Cultural Diffusion Group since 2019.