NMR spectroscopy: the swiss army knife of drug discovery

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has evolved into a powerful tool within drug discovery over the last two decades. While traditionally being used by medicinal chemists for small molecule structure elucidation, it can also be a valuable tool for the identification of small molecules that bind to drug targets, for the characterization of target–ligand interactions and for hit-to-lead optimization. Here, we describe how NMR spectroscopy is integrated into the Pfizer drug discovery pipeline and how we utilize this approach to identify and validate initial hits and generate leads.