Rescaling NMR for a Larger Deployment in Drug Discovery: Hyperpolarization and Benchtop NMR as Potential Game-Changers

This paper discusses the place of NMR in fragment-based drug design. NMR is the reference method for screening, hit validation and affinity determination. Its cost and the expertise it requires limit its use at large scale.

Fragment-based drug design is adopted more widely. It needs biophysical data of high quality for weak ligand–target interactions, produced at scale.

The paper argues that commercially available benchtop NMR spectrometers, combined with hyperpolarisation methods, are an opportunity for systems that can be deployed widely and scaled.