When Stephen Fesik left the pharmaceutical industry to launch an academic drug-discovery laboratory, he drew up a wanted list of five of the most important cancer-causing proteins known to science. These proteins drive tumour growth but have proved to be a nightmare for drug developers: they are too smooth, too floppy or otherwise too finicky for drugs to bind to and block. In the parlance of the field, they are 'undruggable'.
It usually means that, but it's difficult to imagine a molecule behaving like that. Here it seems to mean that they are too soft and intractable for the intended drug combination to lock on to.
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contrex
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Fri 17 Apr, 2015 01:25 pm
Floppiness does not necessarily involve hanging. A jellyfish is floppy. If something is floppy it is yielding, soft and flexible.
I don't agree with that. A jellyfish is only floppy if you hold it up (so that it flops). Otherwise it's yielding, soft and flexible.
I don't agree that a thing has to be held up to be floppy. A floppy disk is floppy compared to a rigid one whichever orientation you hold it in. Likewise a jellyfish or any other flaccid thing.
We can agree to disagree. The word is onomatapoeic. Flip, and flop. It needs to be hand-held (or otherwise free to move, as in dangling) to do that.
imho.
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PUNKEY
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Sat 18 Apr, 2015 06:30 am
I think the "they" means proteins in the tumors.
Floppy can mean "loosely moveable."
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contrex
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Sat 18 Apr, 2015 06:32 am
There you go. I think I can see a difference between something being (acting) floppy (behaving in a floppy manner) and being floppy (having a floppy nature).
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