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Book reviewThe Organic Chemistry of Drug Synthesis (Volume 5) by DanielLednicer, Wiley, 1995. f60 (xii + 219 pages) ISBN 0 471 58959 4

T his is the fi fth volume in the series and summarizes the synthesis of drugs givena United States Adopted Name (USAN): as published by the United States Phar-macopeia in USAN and the USP Dictiona y of Adopted Names between 1988 and1993.

The book is organized into 1 I chapters on the basis of traditional chemical classcategorization. There is also a cross index of drug classes, a cumulative index basedon drug name for volumes l-5 and a subject index for the current volume. Thesyntheses described come from both journal and patent literature, and the authorrightly stresses that the syntheses described are not necessarily the best for the par-ticular compound, but are often designed for the optimum synthesis of analogues.The book is aimed primarily at synthetic organic chemists with an interest in drugdiscovery.

I was somewhat irritated by the opening quotation in the book - Making dis-coveries by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of- which theauthor states represented the art of drug discovery 20 years ago, and is still appli-cable today. This simple statement dismisses the major advances that have beenmade in the understanding of disease processes and rationai drug design. Indeedmost of the examples contained within this book have been speci fical ly designedfor speci fic intervention in speci fic diseases. This aside, the book is well written,easy to follow and provides a very useful overview of the kind of chemistry thathas been published by the pharmaceutical industry in recent years. The presen-tation suffe rs from the variability in size, font and emphasis of the reactionschemes. Inclusion of reagents on the schemes would have enhanced the impactof the chemistry because not all are mentioned in the text .

For the experienced medicinal chemist having grown familiar with classifi-cation by mechanism of action or disease area, the organization by chemical class isfrustrating; similar compounds with similar pharmacology appear in very differ-ent parts of the book. This is where the cross index becomes essential, even thoughthe reader must constantly refer back to the subject index. Another consequenceof the chemical categorization is that there is duplication of often superficial intro-ductory sections.

The book is relat ively error free, and each compound is well referenced, so thatthe reader is immediate ly directed to the literature for further information. Somesnippets of medicinal chemistry principles are introduced, but such a book can-not be expected to give a good overview of how drugs are designed. However,some opportunities are missed, such as explaining why particular syntheses werechosen for optimum eff ici ency of analogue synthesis and pointing out simple con-cepts such as bioisosterism.

The pharmaceutical industry has traditionally recruited good synthetic organicchemists and then trained them in the principles of drug design This text is a use-ful source o f recent case histories and hence could form an invaluable part of thisre-training. In spite of the above cri ticisms, this book would make an invaluableaddition to any chemistry library and I would recommend it to both chemistsrecent ly joining the industry and to teachers and students of Medicinal Chemistry-but I would remove the quotation. Frank D. KingSmithKline BeechamHarlow, Essex, UK CM19 5AW

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DDTV ol. 1, No. 6 June 1996 CopyrIght 0 Elsevw Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 1359-6446/96/$15 00 229