Searching for Molecular Solutions

Ian S. Dunn

Why I looked at this book

There are different ideas on the best way to develop new drugs. One approach is to test large numbers of natural products to see if any have the effect required. Another is to work from first principles as much as possible, designing drugs based on molecular calculations. Alternatively, making incremental modifications to existing drugs may be a sensible approach. I'm hoping that this book will show the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches, in particular the 'first principles' one (which is the one I would try to follow)

First impressions

The sample at Amazon get to the first few pages of chapter 1, but the whole of chapter 1 can be seen on the publishers website at http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/26/04701468/0470146826.pdf
Dunn goes to some length in his discussion of the different approaches to drug discovery. It's non-technical and looks at the issue from different viewpoints - molecule space, molecules as Maxwell's demons and so on. I felt though that it wasn't easy reading - it still requires quite a bit of thought to follow what he is saying.