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SUMMARY:How Best to Explore Chemical Space for Bioactive Molecular Discove
 ry - Prof Adam Nelson
DTSTART:20231009T170000Z
DTEND:20231009T183000Z
UID:TALK204259@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Drishtant Chakraborty
DESCRIPTION:The discovery of bioactive small molecules is a challenge that
  is central to both drug discovery and chemical biology.  However\, given 
 that there may be >10^30 drug-like small molecules\, how can we discover m
 olecules with specific biological functions?  The challenge is compounded 
 by chemists’ highly uneven and unsystematic historic exploration of chem
 ical space: the reliance of a small toolkit of reactions means that the kn
 own chemistry ‘universe’ is dominated by a small number of structural 
 classes that are found in many different molecules.\n\nFirst\, I will expl
 ain how we can draw inspiration directly from the structures of nature’s
  bioactive small molecules: natural products.  Second\, I will explain how
  we have been inspired by how biosynthetic pathways emerge in the first pl
 ace to develop our function-directed discovery approach: activity-directed
  synthesis.  Finally\, I will discuss the prospects for realising fully au
 tonomous molecular discovery: this would require chemical design to be alg
 orithmically-driven and all experimental tasks are fully automated and int
 egrated.
LOCATION:Wolfson Lecture Theatre\,  Department of Chemistry\, Lensfield Ro
 ad
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