New Review article in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery : "Biophysics in drug discovery: impact, challenges and opportunities"

New Review article in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery : "Biophysics in drug discovery: impact, challenges and opportunities" by Jean-Paul Renaud, Chun?wa Chung, Helena Danielson, Ursula Egner, Michael Hennig, Rod Hubbard and Herbert Nar (published online: 12 August 2016 | doi:10.1038/nrd.2016.123).

https://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nrd.2016.123.html

X-ray crystallography has played an important role in drug discovery over the past 40 years. What is less well documented is how a range of other biophysical methods have recently matured from minor supporting roles to critical components of drug discovery platforms in pharmaceutical companies and academic laboratories. There have been great improvements in the speed, sensitivity and range of possible measurements, providing high-resolution mechanistic, kinetic, thermodynamic and structural information on compound–target interactions.

A PubMed search reflects this fundamental change in practice : the number of references containing the terms "biophysics" or "biophysical" together with "drug discovery" is exponentially growing from 1 in 1990 to 190 in 2015 (and already 106 in 2016 up to June 30th) - even though this is not a perfect metric.

The Review provides a framework to understand this evolution by describing the key biophysical methods, the information they can provide and the ways in which they can be applied at different stages of the drug discovery process. Also discussed are the challenges for current technologies and future opportunities to use biophysical methods to solve drug discovery problems.

This article is the fruit of an outstanding teamwork between members of the NovAliX Conference "Biophysics in Drug Discovery" Scientific Committee, representing both pharmaceutical companies (big pharmas as well as SMEs) and academic institutions.

The 4th NovAliX Conference "Biophysics in Drug Discovery" will take place in Strasbourg, 6-9 June 2017.