Abstract
The time taken and the cost of producing novel therapeutic drugs presents a significant burden – a typical target-based drug discovery process involves computational screening of drug libraries, compound assays and expensive clinical trials. This review summarises the value of dynamic conformational information obtained by optical tweezers and how this information can target ‘undruggable’ proteins. Optical tweezers provide insights into the link between biological mechanisms and structural conformations, which can be used in drug discovery. Developing workflows including software and sample preparation will improve throughput, enabling adoption of optical tweezers in biopharma. As a complementary tool, optical tweezers increase the number of drug candidates, improve the understanding of a target's complex structural dynamics and elucidate interactions between compounds and their targets.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 103443 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-12 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Drug Discovery Today |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 14 Nov 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work is funded by the European Union H2020 Marie-Sklowdowska Curie International Training Network AntiHelix, Grant Agreement no. 859853. We thank Dr Michael Woodside and Dr Gregory Bowman for supplying figure files.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)
Funding
This work is funded by the European Union H2020 Marie-Sklowdowska Curie International Training Network AntiHelix, Grant Agreement no. 859853. We thank Dr Michael Woodside and Dr Gregory Bowman for supplying figure files.
Keywords
- biological mechanism
- conformation
- drug discovery
- optical tweezers
- target identification
- undruggable proteins
