The Pharmaceutical Biochemistry Group: Where Pharmaceutical Chemistry Meets Biology and Drug Delivery

Abstract

Successful drug discovery and development of new therapeutics is a long, expensive multidisciplinary process needing innovation and the integration of smart cutting edge science and technology to overcome the challenges in taking a drug from the bench to the bedside. The research activities of the Pharmaceutical Biochemistry group span the drug discovery and development process, providing an interface that brings together pharmaceutical chemistry, biochemistry, structural biology, computational chemistry and biopharmaceutics. Formulation and drug delivery are brought into play at an earlier stage when facing the perennial challenge of transforming a potent molecule in vitro into a therapeutic agent in vivo. Concomitantly, drug delivery results can be understood at a molecular level. This broad range of interdisciplinary research activities and competences enables us to address key challenges in modern drug discovery and development, provides a powerful collaborative platform for other universities and the pharmaceutical industry and an excellent training platform for pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists who will later be involved in drug discovery and development.

Allosteric Modulators for GPCRs as a Therapeutic Alternative with High Potential in Drug Discovery

“…In the last few years, we have seen a great advance in the design of novel allosteric modulators and it will possibly intensify even more in the near future. Progress in drug delivery will help to obtain further spatial specificity of therapeutic drugs, and as a result, we expect will translate into identifying significantly increased number of new drug possibilities that are more effective and with fewer side effects [50,51]. However, no matter how selective such drugs can be designed, they cannot equalize the spatiotemporal basis of specificity that occurs naturally in our systems.…”

Use of Allosteric Targets in the Discovery of Safer Drugs

“…Thus, advances in drug design using allosteric modulators have taken place in the last 2 decades and are likely to become more impressive in the near future. Novel drug delivery methods may aid in the spatial selectivity of the drugs even further, thereby increasing the chances of obtaining more effective drugs with fewer side effects [ 64 , 65 ]. However, no matter how specific such drugs are, they cannot match the spatiotemporal basis of specificity that occurs naturally in our body.…”