Frontiers in Bioscience-Elite (FBE) is published by IMR Press from Volume 13 Issue 2 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.
1 Department of Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Spain
2 CIQ-Departamento de Quimica, Facultade de Ciencias, Universidade de Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, 687, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
3 Facolta di Farmacia, Dipartimento Farmaco Chimico Tecnologico, UNICA, Cagliari 09124, Italy
4 Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Faculty of Pharmacy, USC, Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Spain
5 Department of Especial Public Law, Financial and Tributary Law Area, Faculty of Law, USC, 15782, Spain
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
In recent times, there has been an increased use of Computer-Aided Drug Discovery (CADD) techniques in Medicinal Chemistry as auxiliary tools in drug discovery. Whilst the ultimate goal of Medicinal Chemistry research is for the discovery of new drug candidates, a secondary yet important outcome that results is in the creation of new computational tools. This process is often accompanied by a lack of understanding of the legal aspects related to software and model use, that is, the copyright protection of new medicinal chemistry software and software-mediated discovered products. In the center of picture, which lies in the frontiers of legal, chemistry, and biosciences, we found computational modeling-based drug discovery patents. This article aims to review prominent cases of patents of bio-active organic compounds that involved/protect also computational techniques. We put special emphasis on patents based on Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) models but we include other techniques too. An overview of relevant international issues on drug patenting is also presented.
Keywords
- Legal issues in Computational Drug Discovery
- Drug Patents
- QSAR Copyright
- Review
