Lead compound

This article is about the pharmaceutical concept. For compounds containing the element lead, see Lead compounds. For use of lead in structures, see Lead § Applications.

A lead compound (/ˈliːd/, i.e., a "leading" compound; not to be confused with various compounds of the element lead) in drug discovery is a chemical compound that has pharma­co­logical or biological activity likely to be therapeutically useful, but may never­the­less have suboptimal structure that requires modification to fit better to the target; lead drugs offer the prospect of being followed by "back-up" compounds. The chemical structure serves as a starting point for chemical modifications in order to improve potency, selectivity, or pharma­co­kinetic parameters. Furthermore, newly-invented pharma­co­logically active moieties may have poor druglikeness and may require chemical modification to become "drug-like" enough to be tested biologically or clinically.

Lead compounds are sometimes called developmental candidates. This is because the discovery and selection of lead compounds occurs prior to preclinical and clinical development of the candidate.

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