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Revision with unchanged content. Group I metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) play an important role in the treatment of numerous neurodegenerative, cognitive and psychiatric dis orders. How can we identify exogenous ligands mediating the effects of mGluRs? How do these ligands affect the receptor? The author Tobias Noeske presents the establishment of strategies for the identification and optimization of molecules acting as non-competitive anta gonists of group I mGluRs. These strategies ensure high diversity in the identi fied chemotypes not resembling original reference molecules ( scaffold-hop ping ). The detection of new scaffolds, in turn, is divided into two ap proa ches: First the development of pharmacological assays to screen com pounds at a certain target for their bioactivity, and second the evaluation of com pu ter aided methods for the identification of virtual hits to be screened on the pharmacological assays. Promising molecules were optimized regarding bio activity and selectivity, their binding mode investigated and, fi nally, com pared to existing lead compounds. This book addresses scientists in academia and industry working in early stage drug discovery, predominantly in computer aided drug design.

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Research Scientist. Study of Pharmaceutics at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. PhD-Thesis at Merz Pharmaceuticals GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Post-doc at AstraZeneca, Mölndal, Sweden.

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