A better-fitting molecular 'belt' for making new drugs

The most common pharmaceuticals on the market are made by chaining together rings of molecules to create the drugs that treat conditions including pain, depression and leukemia. But creating those rings and forming them in a way that is tailored to each individual disease has always been a cumbersome and expensive process in medicinal chemistry. New research proposes a way to simplify that transformation. The discovery will likely make it easier to produce new drug candidates, the researchers sa...