A Brighter View Of A Hidden World

For centuries, doctors and researchers had to make use of hit and miss methods of creating or improving drugs to treat illnesses. Some things were tried to see if they would work, while other times the dosages were varied to find the one that worked the best. The results were not always predictable, and even when the treatments were effective they could cause a number of side effects in the patient.

In the last decade, a new method of drug development has been made possible by both technical and scientific advances. As the role of proteins and other compounds came to be known and understood, technological breakthroughs have allowed them to be studied in a way never before possible.

The result is that for a growing number of proteins, researchers can determine their 3-dimensional structures. Once the structure is known, it is possible to determine exactly how the protein works within living organisms. While this knowledge is invaluable in its own right, it also has helped revolutionize drug development. Instead of the sometimes hit and miss methods of previous years, researchers can design drug compounds that will react with a specific protein.

Because a drug is targeted to a specific protein, it means that less of the drug may be necessary as it there is no "loss to general reactions. It also means that the drug can be much more effective, because it does react only with a specific protein. This also means that there are few, if any, side effects -- which are caused when a drug reacts with other compounds in the body.

This new process is called structure-based drug design. It offers hope not only of improved treatments, but treatments for diseases and conditions that could not be helped before. With advances in protein crystallography, this field will continue to grow, to the benefit of all.