Crystal clear

Computational and structural approaches to drug discovery  

R Stroud and J Finer-Moore (eds) 

Cambridge, UK: RSC Publishing 2007 | 382pp | ?89.00 (HB) ISBN 9780854043651

Reviewed by Richard Lewis

When I started to read this book, I was expecting that it would match the prevailing weather, heavy and hard-going. Instead, it was a pleasure. The book has been carefully constructed as a series of essays, each addressing an important topic, and even better, topics that there are many misunderstandings and misconceptions about. Although much of the material could be found in the literature, the emphasis on the didactic elements makes the book greater than the sum of its parts. The essay by Kubinyi reminded me that after many decades of drug discovery, we are still relearning the same truths, and still (wilfully) misusing some of the technology that has been put at our disposal. This, and the explanatory focus, makes me think that the key messages in this book will not be quickly swept away by new discoveries. The scope of the book is wide-ranging, covering structure-based drug design (interpretation of x-rays, water, docking and scoring, flexibility, mutational resistance), artefacts in HTS, fragment-based methods and approaches to ADMET modelling. Each chapter is well referenced, and serves as a good entry point into the literature. 

I would expect any modeller worth their salt to know and understand all the key concepts in this book, so in that respect it is an excellent primer. I would also strongly recommend this book to medicinal chemists leading project teams that use structural information. There is much in here that one should know, to properly utilise the power of structure-based drug design, and modelling in general. This is not a book that should languish in libraries, but it should be a vade mecum  for practicing medicinal chemists, to be consulted regularly.