Structure is beauty, but not always truth

James S Fraser; Mark A Murcko

doi:10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.003

Structure is beauty, but not always truth

Cell. 2024 Feb 1;187(3):517-520. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.003.

Authors

James S Fraser¹, Mark A Murcko²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA. Electronic address: jfraser@fraserlab.com.
² Disruptive Biomedical LLC, Holliston, MA, USA. Electronic address: mark.murcko@gmail.com.

PMID: 38306978
PMCID: PMC10947451 (available on 2025-02-01)
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.003

Abstract

Structural biology, as powerful as it is, can be misleading. We highlight four fundamental challenges: interpreting raw experimental data; accounting for motion; addressing the misleading nature of in vitro structures; and unraveling interactions between drugs and "anti-targets." Overcoming these challenges will amplify the impact of structural biology on drug discovery.

MeSH terms

Beauty
Drug Discovery*
Molecular Biology*

Grants and funding

R35 GM145238/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States