Deconstructing the rule of five

The concept of drug-like properties has come under fire from a Novartis AG study that found the last 20 years of drugs have not conformed to the rule of five. Showing the rule’s principles have not stood the test of time, the paper argues there is no such thing as a definitive, immutable drug-like property.

The rule was introduced in a 1997 review article by Pfizer Inc. researchers, which described a set of biophysical parameter ranges shared by the vast majority of 2,245 compounds that had entered Phase II testing by that time. ...