Practical Fragments

Protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) is a long-standing target for diabetes and other diseases. But as we’ve written previously, it is c...

Despite the effectiveness of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 continues to plague us. The handful of approved small molecule drugs targ...

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

The ten human fatty-acid binding proteins (FABPs) shuttle lipids around cells. As we noted several years ago, FABP4 and FABP5 are potential...

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

Among the many types of artifacts that can fool screens and derail efforts to find leads, small colloidally aggregating molecules (SCAMs) a...

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

As experienced practitioners of fragment-based lead discovery will know, the best way to avoid being misled by artifacts is to combine multi...

Back in 2017 we observed with characteristic subtlety that “heavy metals suck.” That post described a hit-finding campaign which foundered ...

Surface-plasmon resonance ( SPR ) is among the most popular methods for finding fragments. However, as we have noted, SPR can be very prone...

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

In last week’s post we described a free online tool for predicting bad behavior of compounds in various assays. But as we noted, you often ...

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

Earlier this year we highlighted the growth of the Chemical Probes Portal , a free website that profiles more than 500 small molecules targ...

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

Earlier this year we highlighted an analysis of rings found in drugs. Thiazoles are tied for thirteenth place, occurring in at least 30 dru...

COVID-19 has been with us for over two years now. While the human effects have been unquestionably negative, for science it has been the bes...

Over the past sixteen months SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 146 million people worldwide and killed over 3 million. Highly effective vacc...