Medicinal Chemistry Into the Millennium

Significant advances in genomics have provided previously unknown molecular targets, and the opportunity to discover and develop a variety of important new medicines. The timely and successful exploitation of these targets, however, has presented scientists with an appreciable challenge. New, efficient lead generation paradigms, resulting in increasingly large and diverse chemical libraries, have driven the technological advances needed to support their design, characterization and analysis. Bringing together contributions from international experts in both industry and academia, this work reports on a number of important developments. Subjects covered include many of the newer supporting technologies and the specific challenges posed by the need to predict bioavailability characteristics. The application of these techniques in the exploitation of targets as diverse as growth factors, proteases, 7-transmembrane receptors, ion channels and intracellular signalling processes, is also discussed. The topics covered in this book are particularly relevant to scientists in the pharmaceutical industry and other industries dependent on the discovery of biologically active molecules.