Editorial Cite This: J. Med. Chem. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
pubs.acs.org/jmc
Drug Annotations Series Change in Guidelines Jeff Zablocki,* Drug Annotations Associate Editors, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry
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he Drug Annotation Series was launched at the beginning of 2014 with the objective to provide medicinal chemistry case studies of molecules that were undergoing clinical trials or had achieved approval by the health authorities. To distinguish the Drug Annotation Series from other contributions to the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, we were interested in manuscripts that cover one development candidate and the structure−activity relationship (SAR) story related to the identification, optimization, and preclinical advancement of this agent and derivatives thereof. We encouraged authors to highlight medicinal chemistry challenges that were addressed as lessons learned and could benefit readers in their own research. Since its inception, over 50 articles have been published, and therefore, the Drug Annotations articles have accomplished our original objectives and are now well-accepted by the academic and industrial scientific communities. We have covered multiple therapeutic areas and mechanisms of action, and authors from a diversity of institutions and countries have provided examples of how creativity and hard work by multidisciplinary teams have elegantly and diligently overcome key challenges related to biological activity, selectivity, absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, or toxicology issues. From structure based-design approaches to phenotypic cellular screening methods, different chemical classes have been identified and pursued to deliver novel development candidates and drugs that are providing clinical benefit and changing the natural course of many diseases. These articles are undoubtedly good educational vehicles to train current and future drug discovery researchers and nurture our legacy in medicinal chemistry and sister disciplines. Our initial aspiration to encourage our contributors to use human pharmacokinetic (PK) or efficacy clinical data to discuss the predictability of the bioassays to select their development candidate has been partially fulfilled. In spite of the efforts made by our contributors, the human clinical information available at the time of submission for most of the Drug Annotations Series has been often limited. We acknowledge the difficulties that researchers in academic or industry-based medicinal chemistry laboratories are encountering to include clinical information in a chemistry article. While we continue to encourage our contributors to add this information, we have revised the Drug Annotations section in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry Author Guidelines to reflect that PK and pharmacodynamics (PD) clinical results are not necessary. We hope that this minor modification in our original guidelines will facilitate institutional internal review processes and significantly increase the number of first disclosures and timely submission of articles. As was the case in our first communication, we would like to extend invitations to authors to submit articles for the Drug Annotation Series that are covering agents that are in clinical trial or have been approved as drugs.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Authors
*E-mail: echeveria-offi
[email protected]. (C.G.-E.) *E-mail: zablocki-offi
[email protected]. (J.Z.) ORCID
Jeff Zablocki: 0000-0002-8436-5212 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
Carlos Garcia-Echeverria*
© XXXX American Chemical Society
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.9b00038 J. Med. Chem. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
