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  • Review Article
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A guide to drug discovery

Hit and lead generation: beyond high-throughput screening

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 2, pages 369–378 (2003)Cite this article

Key Points

  • Due to the escalating downstream costs in the development phase, objective quality assessment of lead series long before entering clinical trials is an increasing necessity within pharmaceutical research.

  • Moving away from the linear process of compound optimization towards a parallel strategy in which the profile of chemical entities is shaped in a multidimensional manner allows the properties of a molecule to be appropriately balanced in a rapid, iterative fashion.

  • The initiating point in a medicinal chemistry programme can arise from a variety of sources. Depending on the target and further information available, they can range from brute-force, serendipity search-based methods to information-rich design approaches for identifying novel chemical entities for further optimization.

  • High-throughput screening campaigns currently provide the main source for chemistry initiation in pharmaceutical research. Assay development time, logistical hurdles and issues concerning compound acquisition increasingly demand alternative approaches to complement this lead discovery pathway.

  • The design of combinatorial compound libraries on the basis of predicted molecular properties is now widely applied, increasing the quality of the product compounds generated. In addition focused libraries can be generated on the basis of ligand or biostructural information most effectively enhanced by support from modern integrated computational and synthetic methods.

  • Computational algorithms allow the annotation and grouping of biological targets as well as chemical structures. 'Chemogenomics' is the interface between disciplines where chemical topology space is married with biological target space. Chemogenomics databases will in future allow existing target-ligand information to be used prospectively to identify drugable targets and design tailored new ligand motifs thus creating valuable knowledge.

Abstract

The identification of small-molecule modulators of protein function, and the process of transforming these into high-content lead series, are key activities in modern drug discovery. The decisions taken during this process have far-reaching consequences for success later in lead optimization and even more crucially in clinical development. Recently, there has been an increased focus on these activities due to escalating downstream costs resulting from high clinical failure rates. In addition, the vast emerging opportunities from efforts in functional genomics and proteomics demands a departure from the linear process of identification, evaluation and refinement activities towards a more integrated parallel process. This calls for flexible, fast and cost-effective strategies to meet the demands of producing high-content lead series with improved prospects for clinical success.

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Figure 1: Therapeutic target classes.
Figure 2: Don't panic...
Figure 3: Stage-by-stage quality assessment to reduce costly late-stage attrition.
Figure 4: Hit-identification strategies.
Figure 5: Where there's a will, there's a way...

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Acknowledgements

Dr. Simona Ceccarelli is cordially thanked for providing the cartoons 'Don't panic....' and 'Where there's a will, there's a way...'.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Grenzacherstrasse 124, Basel, CH-4070, Switzerland

    Konrad H. Bleicher, Hans-Joachim Böhm, Klaus Müller & Alexander I. Alanine

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  1. Konrad H. Bleicher
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  2. Hans-Joachim Böhm
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  3. Klaus Müller
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  4. Alexander I. Alanine
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander I. Alanine.

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FURTHER INFORMATION

Society for Biomolecular Screening

Glossary

DRUGABILITY

The feasibility of a target to be effectively modulated by a small molecule ligand that has appropriate bio-physicochemical and absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion properties to be developed into a drug candidate with appropriate properties for the desired therapeutic use.

HIT

A primary active compound(s), with non-promiscuous binding behaviour, exceeding a certain threshold value in a given assay(s). The 'active' is followed up with an identity and purity evaluation, an authentic sample is then obtained or re-synthesized and activity confirmed in a multi-point activity determination to establish the validity of the hit (validated hit).

LEAD

A prototypical chemical structure or series of structures that demonstrate activity and selectivity in a pharmacological or biochemically relevant screen. This forms the basis for a focused medicinal chemistry effort for lead optimization and development with the goal of identifying a clinical candidate. A distinct lead series has a unique core structure and the ability to be patented separately.

HIGH-THROUGHPUT SCREENING

Screening (of a compound collection) to identify hits in an in vitro assay, usually performed robotically in 384-well microtitre plates.

HIGH-CONTENT LEAD SERIES

A lead series in which representatives have been extensively refined in not only their structure–activity relationship and selectivity, but also in their physicochemical and early absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion properties, and safety measures, such as metabolic stability, permeation and hERG liabilities. Correlations have been elucidated and all crucial parameters have shown themselves to be modulated in the series.

STRUCTURE–ACTIVITY RELATIONSHIP

The consistent correlation of structural features or groups with the biological activity of compounds in a given biological assay.

PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES

Physical molecular properties of a compound. Typical properties are solubility, acidity, lipophilicity, polar surface area, shape, flexibility and so on.

VALIDATED HIT SERIES

A set of hits clustered into sub-structurally related families, representatives of which have been evaluated for their specificity, selectivity, physicochemical and in vitro ADME properties to characterize the series.

LEAD SERIES IDENTIFIED

A peer-reviewed milestone, the requirements to be fulfilled are closely linked to the clinical candidate profile. Initial criteria are defined when hits are first identified; they include activity, selectivity and pertinent physicochemical properties, plus an evaluation of ADME and certain safety attributes. In vivo activity is not a mandatory requirement, provided the obstacles are appreciated and considered to be surmountable based on evidence.

CYTOCHROME P450

A family of promiscuous iron-haem-containing enzymes involved in oxidative metabolism of a broad variety of xenobiotics and drug compounds.

PHARMACOPHORE

The spatial orientation of various functional groups or features necessary for activity at a biomolecular target.

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL OPTIMIZATION

The process of parallel optimization of several relevant drug-property parameters in concert with activity, to produce a drug candidate with balanced property profiles suitable for clinical development.

NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE

A spectroscopy tool used for the assignment and confirmation of chemical structure of a compound or biological macromolecule. Sophisticated multi-dimensional methods are used to characterize larger and more complex biomolecules.

COMBINATORIAL CHEMISTRY

Synthesis technologies to generate compound libraries rather than single products. Robotic instruments for solid- and solution-phase chemistry, as well as high-throughput purification equipment, are applied.

DRUG-LIKENESS

A scoring metric (computational) for the similarity of a given structure to a representative reference set of marketed drugs.

DIVERSITY

A property–distance metric reflecting the dissimilarity of objects (molecules). Various molecular descriptors (indices) are used to define compounds in a numerical fashion so that they can be readily compared. Such measures must be considered within an appropriate context to be meaningful.

'FREQUENT-HITTER' LIABILITIES

An empirically derived metric by which compounds are assigned a probability to produce (false) positive results (hits) frequently in diverse screening assays.

MOLECULAR TOPOLOGY

A graph-based method of describing molecular structure using atom connectivity through the molecular framework and assigning atoms or substructural domains with various property types: lipophilic, H-bond acceptor/donor, positively/ negatively charged and so on.

DESCRIPTORS

Metrics used to numerically describe a structure or certain molecular attributes of a compound (for example, Tanimoto, Ghose and Crippen, BCUT and so on).

PARALLEL SYNTHESIS

The process by which a set of individual compounds is made simultaneously using common chemical building blocks and homologous reagents.

PRIVILEGED STRUCTURE

A specific core or scaffolding structure that imparts a generic activity towards a protein family or limited set of its members independently of the specific substituents attached to it.

CONFORMERS

Distinct three-dimensional forms of a molecular structure of a given atomic connectivity, which results from internal rotations about single bonds between atoms.

DOCKING AND SCORING

The process of computationally placing a virtual molecular structure into a binding site of a biological macromolecule (docking) and flexibly or rigidly relaxing the respective structures then ranking (scoring) the complementarity of fit.

SMILES

A character-based line notation for chemical structures.

BIT STRINGS

A contiguous set of characters that consists entirely of 1s and 0s, which can be used to encode, for example, the presence or not of structural elements in a compound.

RAPID FEEDBACK SCREENING

Rapid feedback provided by assaying small compound sets (< 1,000) through a medium- throughput assay to guide the SAR for rapid iterative design and synthesis cycles.

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Bleicher, K., Böhm, HJ., Müller, K. et al. Hit and lead generation: beyond high-throughput screening. Nat Rev Drug Discov 2, 369–378 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd1086

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