Library Design Strategies to Accelerate Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) has become an established approach for the generation of early lead candidates. However, despite its success and inherent advantages, hit-to-candidate progression for FBDD is not necessarily faster than for the traditional high-throughput screening. Thus, new technology-driven library design strategies have emerged as a means to facilitate more efficient fragment screening and/or subsequent fragment-to-hit chemistry.

This minireview will discuss such strategies, which cover the use of labelled fragments for NMR spectroscopy, X-ray crystallographic screening of specialized fragments, covalent linkage for mass spectrometry, dynamic combinatorial chemistry, and fragments optimized for easy elaboration.