ABSTRACT

In structure-based drug design (SBDD), x-ray structures of small-molecule inhibitors bound to protein targets are used to guide the synthesis of increasingly potent and selective inhibitors in an iterative process. Traditionally, this iterative design method is applied to one target at a time. If the target of interest belongs to a large family of proteins with related sequences and structures, new opportunities and challenges arise. Lessons learned from one protein may be used to speed progress on others.