Discovering Novel Anticancer Drugs: Practical Aspects and Recent Advances

There has never been a more exciting time than the present for discovering anti-cancer drugs. The past decade has witnessed the nearly complete sequencing of the human genome, major advances in the multidisciplinary application of new genomic technologies, and the integration of combinatorial chemistry into the drug discovery process. This review is intended for cancer researchers who are not familiar with the details of the drug discovery process in the pharmaceutical industry. As such, it offers an introduction to the procedure, providing a description of each step of a representative drug discovery process that integrates combinatorial chemistry with structure-based drug design into the design of development compounds for subsequent evaluation in clinical trials. The impact of new genomics technologies and the sequencing of the human genome on drug discovery is described. A strong emphasis is placed on the pragmatic considerations that guide a multidisciplinary, iterative small-molecule drug discovery program, as well as the recent technological advances that permit greater efficiency and productivity. Because of the focus on structure-based drug design, the iterative processes described are somewhat biased toward the inhibition of enzymes and proteins, rather than receptors, by small molecules. However, most of the general practices apply equally well to drug discovery executed in the absence of protein structures. Problems and applications specific to the discovery of broad classes of anticancer drugs are described, although, again, general principles may apply to other therapeutic areas.