Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Druglikeness
Summary
Druglikeness is a qualitative concept used in drug design for how "druglike" a substance is with respect to factors like bioavailability. It is estimated from the molecular structure before the substance is even synthesized and tested. A druglike molecule has properties such as:
Solubility in both water and fat, as an orally administered drug needs to pass through the intestinal lining after it is consumed, be carried in aqueous blood and penetrate the lipid-based cell membrane to reach the inside of a cell. A model compound for the lipophilic cellular membrane is 1-octanol (a lipophilic medium-chain fatty alcohol), so the logarithm of the octanol-water partition coefficient, known as LogP, is used to predict the solubility of a potential oral drug. This coefficient can be experimentally measured or predicted computationally, in which case it is sometimes called "cLogP". As the lipophilicity of ionizable compounds is strongly dependent of pH, the distribution coefficient logD, or a logP vs pH curve may be used instead.
Potency at the biological target. High potency (high value of pIC50) is a desirable attribute in drug candidates, as it reduces the risk of non-specific, off-target pharmacology at a given concentration. When associated with low clearance, high potency also allows for low total dose, which lowers the risk of idiosyncratic drug reactions.
Ligand efficiency and lipophilic efficiency.
Molecular weight: The smaller the better, because diffusion is directly affected. The great majority of drugs on the market have molecular weights between 200 and 600 Daltons, and particularly
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related publications (23)
Related concepts (9)
Lipophilic efficiency
Lipophilic efficiency (LiPE), sometimes referred to as ligand-lipophilicity efficiency (LLE) is a parameter used in drug design and drug discovery to evaluate the quality of research compounds, linking potency and lipophilicity in an attempt to estimate druglikeness. For a given compound LiPE is defined as the pIC50 (or pEC50) of interest minus the LogP of the compound. In practice, calculated values such as cLogP or calculated LogD are often used instead of the measured LogP or LogD.
Lipinski's rule of five
Lipinski's rule of five, also known as Pfizer's rule of five or simply the rule of five (RO5), is a rule of thumb to evaluate druglikeness or determine if a chemical compound with a certain pharmacological or biological activity has chemical properties and physical properties that would likely make it an orally active drug in humans. The rule was formulated by Christopher A. Lipinski in 1997, based on the observation that most orally administered drugs are relatively small and moderately lipophilic molecules.
Lead compound
A lead compound (ˈliːd, i.e. a "leading" compound, not to be confused with various compounds of the metallic element lead) in drug discovery is a chemical compound that has pharmacological or biological activity likely to be therapeutically useful, but may nevertheless have suboptimal structure that requires modification to fit better to the target; lead drugs offer the prospect of being followed by back-up compounds. Its chemical structure serves as a starting point for chemical modifications in order to improve potency, selectivity, or pharmacokinetic parameters.