Authors: Bernard Testa, Stefanie-Dorothea Krämer, Heidi Wunderli-Allenspach, Gerd Folkers
Informatics and robotics are the workhorses of a
technological revolution in drug research. On them are based combinatorial chemistry, which yields compounds by the many thousands, and high-throughput bioassays, which screen them for activity. The results are avalanches of 'hits', which invade the databases like swarms of locusts. But far from being a plague, these innumerable compounds become a blessing if properly screened for 'drugability', i.e., for 'drug-like' properties such as good pharmacokinetic (PK) behavior. Pharmacokinetic
profiling of
bioactive compounds has, thus, become a sine qua non condition for cherry-picking the most promising hits. Just as important, but less visible…
