Practical Fragments

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are common drug targets that present challenges for fragment-based approaches. Biophysical studies of t...

Computational approaches for discovering hits often involve sorting through many possibilities and examining a few closely. With luck, some...

People often wonder how selective fragments need to be. According to molecular complexity theory , the answer is “not very”. After all, it ...

Ligand efficiency ( LE ) is one of the more controversial topics we cover at Practical Fragments . One critic asserted – incorrectly – th...

The results of our latest poll are in – thanks to all who participated! Of the 119 people who responded to the first question, 87% said th...

Todays paper is from a group in Korea.  It's a typical "we did some in silico screening, limited biochemical testing, made a compo...

Practical Fragments covers a wide variety of journals. J. Med. Chem. , Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. , Drug Disc. Today , and ACS Med. Chem. Le...

There are many ways to screen for fragments.  One of the really emerging areas uses mass spec detection: WAC , native mass spec , HDX , and...

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

As sites have closed down, we have seen a fair number of paper come out describing work at various sites.  Today's paper is another of ...

As a recent post emphasized, crystallography is a key technique for fragment-based lead discovery. We’ve occasionally touched on things t...

Our current poll (right-hand side of page) asks about NMR. But of course, there are lots of other ways to find fragments, and the question...

There are certain movies that when they are on TV, I can't not watch.  I call these Broken Leg Movies (as in if I were laid up with a b...

Practical Fragments has quite a few posts about PAINS , or pan-assay interference compounds. In part this reflects their sad prevalence in...

Among fragment-finding techniques, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)  ranks near the top . Protein-detected methods, like HSQC/HMQC-based SA...

X-ray crystallography plays a starring role in fragment-based lead discovery. But, with a few exceptions , it is rarely the primary scree...

I know you all come here looking for pithy breakdowns of recent publications in the fragment world.  Today Dan and I are both in Boston at ...

Extracellular-regulated kinase 2 (ERK2) is one of just two known substrates of the kinases MEK1 and MEK2, themselves the subjects of consid...

As regular readers here know, we often discuss metrics because everyone uses them.  Last year, agent provcateur Pete Kenny unleashed a broa...

To some, X-ray crystallography may be a rather dry topic. However, the process generally entails lots of liquids. In particular, the common...