Fragment-Based Drug Discovery of Phosphodiesterase Inhibitors

Phosphodiesterases are proving to be fruitful targets for drug discovery. At the same time fragment-based drug discovery has matured into a powerful and widely applied technique. In this communication we review the application of fragment-based drug discovery for the successful identification of novel 3′,5′-cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitors, concentrating on both experimental and computational strategies for fragment screening and hit-to-lead development. To this end, we also mine the open access databases ChEMBL and PDB for fragments showing PDE inhibitory activity, as well as SureChEMBL for recent PDE related patents, to provide a wider context for exploring fragment diversity. Together these approaches form an integrated experimental and computational platform to exploit fragment-based drug discovery for this important gene superfamily.