INTRODUCTION

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  The molecules at the core of this book have been carefully selected from several thousand therapeutic agents that have been used in medicine at one time or another. The development of each of them, arduous and costly though it might have been, represents an enormously valuable investment with very large and ongoing benefits. In the course of discovering all these wonderfully useful molecules, we have learned more about the discovery process itself and have developed an ever expanding set of new discovery tools. The invention of these new platforms for innovation is being powered by dramatic advances in technology, computing and the underlying chemical and biomedical sciences.

  The very next section of this book provides a step-by-step introduction to the understanding of the architecture of organic molecules and the general principles that govern structures of molecules. In addition, we explore the fundamental forces that hold molecules together and that allow them to recognize and bind to one another. The affinity of molecules for one another is central to the biological activity of therapeutic agents and to life itself. That section on how to read the chemical diagrams of small molecules is followed by another tutorial on understanding much larger structures, the proteins of life.