An editorial in Drug Discovery Today, entitled ‘Are SAR tables obsolete’ was published recently (Dec. 16.2016) on line questioning the utility of that icon of Medicinal Chemistry papers, ‘The SAR table’. The argument is made that currently, with all the knowledge available regarding the physicochemical properties of the compounds discussed in medicinal chemistry papers, it might be better to condense this information in some kind of 2D-diagram.
This article that was published in Drug Discovery Today in 2007 to commemorate the publication of Lipinski’s Rule of Five (Ro5) in the professional literature of drug discovery. It is a reflective, quasi-philosophical essay about the impact of the Ro5 in drug discovery during the last ten years.
”I am not a medical doctor nor am I a savvy drug-discoverer; I am just an apprentice. However, I suggest that ten years after the publication of the Ro5, it might be time for a collective reflection.”
In the essay, it is argued that the status of drug discovery as a science is similar to the state of Astronomy before the formulation of the Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. There are plenty of databases containing the chemical and affinity data (Ki, IC50 and related quantities) of a limited set of chemical entities toward the corresponding molecular (biological) targets. However, knowledge of the underlying laws that govern the connection between the two domains is rather limited. Further, it is argued that we need to seek a different set of variables that will permit a more robust set of optimization criteria for navigating in the drug-discovery space.