continued innovation in chemistry is required to drive the discovery of the next wave of medicines
K. R. Campos et al. Science 363, eaat0805 (2019)
Overreliance on a limited set of chemical transformations has arguably limited the chemical and structural space explored by industry in the search for new medicines. Whilst lipophilic, achiral and highly aromatic molecules are easy to construct in the lab, their molecular properties do not necessarily correlate with success in drug discovery and development.
Increasingly complex, chiral and sp3-rich molecules appear to offer increased success; their molecular properties can be correlated with increased potency, selectivity and solubility.
However, their complex structures render them difficult to access and explore using current state-of-the-art chemistry. New methodology is required to target the most desirable structures for drug discovery.
Asymmetric Suzuki Reactions Limited has worked hard to meet this challenge with the development of powerful methodologies for the synthesis of drug-like 3D scaffolds and building blocks. This technology will both broaden the chemical space easily accessible at the beginning of drug discovery to complex, 3D and highly functionalised structures, and provide alternative, efficient routes to complex molecules already in development.