Comment by jcranmer
2 years ago
> Then we could use those two building blocks to design new proteins (drugs) that do what we want. If we solve those two problems with very high accuracy, we can also reduce the time it takes to go from starting a drug discovery programme to approved medicine.
Drugs are usually not proteins, but instead small molecules that are designed to help or interfere with the operation of proteins instead.
That is only true because of our current tools and capabilities. With improved manufacturing techniques and AlphaFold++ I think biologics will dominate. Even still, there are ~2000 approved biologics [0].
[0] - https://purplebooksearch.fda.gov/advanced-search
Yep, proteins are so much more flexible / precise than small molecules. Also we can get the body to produce them. Think mRNA vaccines.