The drug discovery process: from target to lead identification

This course will give an overview of the main steps characterizing the drug discovery process, from target identification and validation to the development of a lead compound, on the road to finding optimized drug candidates. To this end, colleagues from companies and non academic institutions, with consolidated expertise in these research fields, will illustrate the most relavant concepts of hit finding for a chosen target, with examples of experimental approaches as well as the crucial role of computational methods. The second part of the scheduled lessons will be devoted to the application of ADMET procedures and of medicinal chemisry strategies focused on the process of optimization of hit small molecules to developable lead compounds. Some relevant case