Practical Fragments

Ivermectin is a miracle drug. It cures infections caused by several types of parasitic roundworms, including those that cause river blindnes...

Last week we highlighted a new tool to computationally predict whether a molecule might aggregate, thereby causing false positives. This do...

Practical Fragments has written repeatedly about various assay artifacts (vide infra). Different technologies are susceptible to different ...

Practical Fragments has written frequently about pan-assay interference compounds, or PAINS . These molecules contain substructures that fr...

False positives and artifacts are a constant source of irritation – and worse – in compound screening. We’ve written frequently about small...

Back in 2015, Practical Fragments highlighted a new resource calling itself “ The Chemical Probes Portal .” At the time it included just s...

Two weeks ago we described fragment libraries built for crystallographic screening, and this week we continue the library theme. A primary...

Last year’s poll revealed that crystallography has become the most popular technique for FBLD. Three recent papers discuss some of the why...

The year is done , and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night. As we've done since 2012 , Practical Fragments is ...

CHI’s Drug Discovery Chemistry meeting took place over four days last week in San Diego. This was easily the largest one yet, with eight t...

Teddy’s retirement from the blog has cut down on the number of PAINS-shaming posts , and truth be told there are so many candidate papers ...

Readers of a certain age may fondly remember the interviews with Dr. Noitall that used to enliven the pages of Science . Sadly, he died a ...

Chagas disease , caused by Trypanosoma cruzi , is spread throughout Central and South America by a nasty blood-sucking insect. A couple dru...

Chemical probes can be incredibly powerful reagents for understanding biology. A potent, selective, and cell-active modulator of a specific...

As regular readers may have discerned, I’m favorably disposed to most of the papers I highlight. They may have flaws or inconsistencies, bu...