Quick Discovery
Online Content
As a Centre, we aim to bring training to all researchers involved in drug discovery. Below you will find links to videos to support your drug discovery research.
We have a number of series to help introduce some of the basics of drug discovery science. You can find some concepts of designing and improving compounds, how to set up some common chemical reactions, and some hints and tips for your chemistry. After an introduction to the theory of DMPK, there is a more practical series explaining how to set up assays. NMR gives an overview of how to use NMR and how to analyse your data. Finally “In Conversation” is a series of webinars with various experts in the field of drug discovery.
The Basics of Drug Discovery
Drug discovery is a complicated process involving many scientists, over many years, all working towards the same goal. But how does this actually work in practice? Find out some basics in the articles linked below.
Medicinal Chemistry
How does a drug come to be a drug? Drug design encompasses organic synthetic chemistry, pharmacology and biology and falls under the name “Medicinal Chemistry”. Medicinal chemists are engineers of the drug discovery world. With their knowledge, medicinal chemists can design drug molecules to bind to specific protein targets, cause a desired efficacy against a disease of interest, survive the many environments of the body and assist in the translation to animal models. But how does the medicinal chemist do this? Through this series of online talks, you will be exposed to key aspects of drug design and see what it takes to be an engineer of drugs.
Reaction Set Up
Our expert chemists have created step-by-step tutorials that will guide you through setting up chemical reactions and using equipment with ease. Whether you’re a seasoned chemist or a beginner, our videos will help you set-up and perform reaction to obtain safe results.
But remember, safety always comes first. Please make sure to wear the appropriate personal protective equipment, fill in the necessary risk assessments, and handle reagents with care. The DDU cannot take responsibility for any accidents or injuries resulting from failure to follow proper health and safety guidelines.
So what are you waiting for? Check out our reaction set-up videos today!
NMR
This series of videos will take you through the basics of NMR, from basic rules and analysis to more complex analysis with hints and tips.
Mass Spectrometry
Mass spectrometry is a technique used by scientists to identify the mass to charge ratio of a chemical compound. This can assist in finding out the molecular weight, elemental composition, purity etc of a chemical sample. The technique often uses a High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) as a start point to separate compounds based on their polarity before being passed through the destructive mass spectrometry instrument. In this section you will explore how a mass spectrometry instrument works, the differences between low- and high-resolution instruments and how the elemental composition of the compound can be determined.
Data Management
Data management is an essential component of the drug discovery process. Without proper data management, it can be challenging to connect data across different disciplines, leading to missed information and lost opportunities. However, data management does more than just linking data. It can assist in optimising chemical reactions, library enumeration, compound design, and many other critical aspects of drug discovery.
By implementing data management techniques, drug discovery teams can streamline their workflows, reduce errors and improve decision-making. With the right data management tools and strategies, researchers can access, analyse, and share data across different teams and disciplines, ensuring that everyone is working towards the same goal.
This section will provide you worked examples and tools to implement data management into your drug discovery pipeline
Computational Drug Design
There are different ways to approach the task of generating new compounds using computational tools. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. Knowing the foundations of the main techniques is essential to help decide which approach is the best for a given problem.
In this series of talks Dr. James Webster walks through the fundamentals of computational generative drug design of small molecules, covering the techniques and also gives out a demonstration on how to perform it using freely available open-source software.
The Basics of DMPK
This series will cover the theoretical background of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics. Why is it so important to drug discovery and how do we test these factors?
There are also a series of animated videos will take you through the basic principles on how to set up, perform and analyse important in vitro DMPK assays.
Tips and Tricks
A padlet is a repository used to store and share content with others. Here you will find padlets with lots of information on drug discovery-related topics. Each padlet contains groups of related cards. Simply click on the cards to open and read more. Scrolling down in each of the sections will reveal more cards.
Padlets are available on Medicinal Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, in vitro DMPK, Bioanalysis, and Cellular Biology.