oa Preface

This first issue of Vol. 12 of “Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry” comes at a time of increasing change within both the pharmaceutical industry and medicinal chemistry. Currently 22 of the top 25 selling drugs are reported to be generic, lacking the composition of matter patent protection that characterizes the early phase of the life cycle for any successful new product launch in the area of small-molecule therapeutics. The remaining three of the top 25 are expected to become generic by the year 2015. Other new drugs will eventually enter into this top tier of pharmaceutical sales, but the sobering fact is that the pharmaceutical industry is now more akin to industries that deal in commodities, in much the same way that the agricultural chemical industry is today. Medicinal chemistry is an enormously rewarding intellectual enterprise that has tremendous positive impact upon public health. However, in general, knowledge itself and the transfer of information has become dependent not only on the human imagination, but also how fast a person can type into a computer with broad-band access to the internet. The specialized training and dedication required to receive proficiency as a medicinal chemist has been complemented and amplified by this rapid access to knowledge, taken together with better tools and methods to carry out parallel synthesis and compound library screening. There continues to be no better time than now to be a medicinal chemist, exploring the interface of structure and function. Atypical drug targets are now investigated to a greater extent, such as nucleic acid binding proteins and the protein- protein interface. A greater appreciation of the merits of phenotypic screening, even in the absence of complete understanding of molecule mechanism of action, has also emerged in some quarters. I wish to thank the Guest Editors and Section Editors of CTMC for their dedication, initiative, and hard work, and the many authors of the various manuscripts that appear in CTMC. I also thank Ambreen Wasim, Dr. Mahmood Alam and Dr. Matthew Honan of Bentham Science Publishers for support and encouragement, and Associate Editor Ms. Rhoda Joseph for editorial and administrative support.