Abstract

Since the early 1990s, several technological and scientific advances — such as combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening and the sequencing of the human genome — have been heralded as remedies to the problems facing the pharmaceutical industry. The use of these technologies in some form is now well established at most pharmaceutical companies; however, the return on investment in terms of marketed products has not met expectations. Fragment-based drug design is another tool for drug discovery that has emerged in the past decade. Here, we describe the development and evolution of fragment-based drug design, analyse the role that this approach can have in combination with other discovery technologies and highlight the impact that fragment-based methods have made in progressing new medicines into the clinic.

Author affiliations

1. Pharmaceutical Discovery Division, Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, Illinois 60064, USA.

Correspondence to: Philip J. Hajduk¹ Email: philip.hajduk@abbott.com

Published online 9 February 2007

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