Practical Fragments

Last week we highlighted KinaFrag, a database of kinase-fragment complexes. Continuing the theme, this week brings us CovPDB , a database o...

Four of the six approved fragment-derived drugs are kinase inhibitors, and three of these bind in the active site. Despite these successes,...

The drugging of HIV-1 protease is a classic structure-based design success story, as discussed in a guest post by Glyn Williams from the ea...

So you’ve run a fragment screen, gotten some hits, and validated them. What then? Looking for in-house or commercial analogs is always a go...

Just over a year ago the FDA granted accelerated approval to sotorasib , the first marketed inhibitor of KRAS and the first approved fragme...

Practical Fragments has written previously ( here and here ) about the enzyme Notum, which shuts down Wnt signaling by removing a palmitoy...

Every few years computational chemists are invited to compete in the Statistical Assessment of Proteins and Ligands (SAMPL) challenges. Rese...

The toll-like receptors TLR7 and TLR8 are closely related proteins that respond to single-stranded RNA, often associated with viral infectio...

The first third of 2022 has already been graced with two major fragment conferences. Two more have recently been added, and 2023 is starting...

Last week the CHI Drug Discovery Chemistry (DDC) meeting returned triumphantly to San Diego. This was the best conference I’ve attended in ...

Wnt proteins are implicated in a variety of diseases, from Alzheimer’s to colorectal cancer. The enzyme Notum shuts down signaling by removi...

Recently Practical Fragments wrote about nucleophilic fragments that could react with proteins or cofactors. Previously we’ve also written...

Practical Fragments has discussed fragments on Mars and Venus , but those planets are just two small specks in a vast universe. Always thi...

Hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) can help identify the binding site of a ligand, sometimes. Briefly, a protein-ligand ...

Covalent fragment-based lead discovery is becoming increasingly popular , spurred on by the rapid discovery and approval of sotorasib . In g...

Halogen bonding is an esoteric type of molecular interaction. Any first-year chemistry student can tell you that halogens are electronegati...

Today marks exactly two years since Practical Fragments first mentioned SARS-CoV-2. Since then, COVID-19 has killed more than 6 million pe...

Practical Fragments has written previously about PhotoAffinity Bits, or PhABits , which are fragments designed to reveal binding (as oppose...