[astro-codes]

Why wouldn't this have much value to pharma? Is it because its application is actually really limited in scope?

[dekhn]

there are research groups this would be useful for but structures are not on the critical path to drug discovery or approval.

[exikyut]

Out of (probably overoptimistic :) ) curiosity, what do you see are the critical paths?

[l33tman]

I've been doing protein pharma research and the structure is only a first step, then years of figuring out the kinematics and dynamics of the protein, figuring out how it works, how all the natural ligands bind and affect the kinematics.. and only after all that you might conceivably start to engineer drug compounds (unless you bootstrap by a natural ligand to tweak "randomly", but then again, that's how pharma development traditionally works).

Still, even if structure determination is not on the "critical path", it IS a big barrier that has (started) to fall now.

[dekhn]

Initial molecule generation and FDA approval.