FBDD and Networking

Reading an account of the session at the ACS on application of computational methods to FBDD, reminded me that it would be a good time to raise awareness of networking groups in this area. Both this blog and Practical Fragments allow readers to comment on posts although this tends not to happen with the frequency that it does at In the Pipeline, probably reflecting the huge readership, frequent updating and diverse content of what I consider to be the best drug discovery blog by a long way.

People interested in FBDD may already belong to a number of relevant LinkedIn groups. The groups offer some advantages over blogs for getting discussions going in that anyone can start a discussion and group members get alerted by email whenever somebody makes a new comment. I�ll list some of these below in case there are some that you�ve not yet heard about.

Fragment Based Drug Discovery (This group is linked by both FBDD blogs)

Label Free Assay Technology Group (It is the assay that makes FBDD possible. The weaker the binding that you can measure reliably, the more powerful your assay)

Structural Biology (X-ray Crystallography, NMR Spectroscopy, Electron Microscopy) (Generally you�re going to need crystal structures to take fragment hits forward)

Job opportunities in Computational Chemistry and Biology, Xray Crystallography, Fragment Based DD

Recently, I submitted the same item for discussion at a number of LinkedIn groups. I invited group members to share their views on the most appropriate technologies for detecting fragment binding. I learned about some new ways to configure SPR experiments and the use of Tm-shift assays. Most of the discussion was in the Structural Biology group (see discussion) although there was helpful input from the relatively new Label Free Assay Technology Group (see discussion) so thank you to all the participants. It was also great to see a couple of familiar faces from my days in Big Pharma, including a co-author from an article that a number of us wrote back in 2007

Surface Plasmon Resonance

General Reviews

Rich & Myszka, Grading the commercial optical biosensor literature � Class of 2008: �The Mighty Binders� J. Mol. Recognit. 2010, 23, 1-64 Link | Review

Application to Fragment Screening

Perspicace et al, Fragment-Based Screening Using Surface Plasmon Resonance Technology, J. Biomol. Screen. 2009, 14, 337-349 DOI | Review

Binding Pathologies

Giannetti et al, Surface Plasmon Resonance Based Assay for the Detection and Characterization of Promiscuous Inhibitors, J. Med. Chem. 2008, 51, 574-580 DOI | Review