Tetrahydroperidines Are a Core Chemical Scaffold in Drugs

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Tetrahydroperidines are a core chemical scaffold seen in some drugs. Because they can be difficult to make, these compounds are underrepresented in existing small molecule libraries. The team built their own virtual library based entirely on molecules containing the tetrahydraperidine scaffold. It contained 75 million virtual compounds that could be tested against the 5H2A receptor.

In this episode:

00:46 A virtual chemical library uncovers potential antidepressants

Certain psychedelic drugs are of interest to researchers due to their promising antidepressant effects. To help speed up the discovery of molecules with useful properties, researchers have built a virtual library of 75 million compounds related to these drugs. This approach yielded two molecules that showed antidepressant properties in mice, but without the hallucinogenic activity of psychedelic drugs.

Research article: Kaplan et al.

Research Briefing: Bespoke library docking for 5-HT2A receptor agonists with antidepressant activity

08:25 Research Highlights

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10:42 Nobel News

Flora Graham from the Nature Briefing joins us to talk about the winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes.

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Enter Nature’s ‘Scientist at Work’ photo competition, full details here

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