Nowadays, with the continuous development and progress of science and technology, the research and development of new drugs still have many problems such as high loss, high cost and long research period. Therefore, the global pharmaceutical industry is still facing many challenges.

Chemical structure of representative natural products approved for clinical use. Alejandro GG, et al. Biomolecules. 2022, 12, 1202.

Traditional drug development is mainly through random screening from natural active products or existing compound libraries, which is inefficient and blind. With the continuous development of medicinal chemistry, high-throughput screening, virtual screening, structure-based drug design and development and other methods have emerged in order to improve the efficiency of new drug development. These provide new tools for discovering bioactive molecules. Although high-throughput screening is still the classic way of new drug research and development at present, the advantages of fragment-based drug development (FBDD) are gradually emerging in the face of some novel and complex targets. This has attracted more and more drug development workers attention.

Signal transduction participates in all life activities of cells and has the functions of regulating cell proliferation, metabolism, defense and adaptation. Abnormal cellular signaling is the molecular basis for the occurrence and development of all diseases. The process mainly includes three steps: the first is that cells receive signaling molecules; the second is the activation of intracellular signal pathways; and the third is the regulation of cell function and activity. Drug development based on target pathways places more emphasis on exploring drug functions through molecular mechanism research, which is beneficial for elucidating the pathological mechanisms of diseases and providing new ideas and target targets for new drug screening and development.

Drug screening is the process of testing a large number of compounds to determine whether they produce appropriate biochemical or cellular effects, which is usually an important step in the drug discovery pathway. Small molecule drugs screening is a time-consuming and expensive process to select potential drugs from a large number of natural or synthetic compounds. For drug screening, quality is more important than quantity. And the focus of the entire industry is shifting from quickly screening the maximum number of compounds to screening high-quality compounds with robust drug characteristics.

Figure 1. Drug Discovery Process