Development opportunity
Strathclyde University in Scotland has opened up access to its Drug Discovery Portal, (DPP), a compound library that is not otherwise commercially available.
While the idea is that the compounds in the library are initially used in silico for virtual screening, they are linked to the originating chemists so that samples are available for physical screening, and analogues can be rapidly designed and synthesised in order to understand structure-activity relationships.
The aim is to allow users to go quickly from a novel hit to an optimised candidate.
The DDP is built on a combination of medicinal chemistry and advanced computational chemistry. The researchers at Strathclyde have extensive experience of the drug discovery process gained from both industrial and academic collaborations and an understanding of the molecular biology and biochemistry associated with molecular targets.
The chemical collection in the DDP has been assembled through links with groups of natural products and synthetic chemists from academic institutions worldwide. Since there are many chemists working with a wide range of chemical classes, this has resulted in an exceptionally diverse collection of small molecules, captured for the first time in the DDP library. Physical samples are rapidly available for assay validation and the DDP provides direct access to the expertise and enthusiasm of the originating chemist for subsequent hit optimisation.
Contact is welcomed from companies wanting to match compounds or targets for accelerated drug discovery.
For more information, email Rachel Clark, DPP’s Research Manager, or Catherine Breslin, Business Manager.
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