Collaboration Set to Identify Small Molecule Drug Candidates

A new collaborative research effort is aimed at identifying novel small molecule lead compounds for highly validated drug targets.

The candidate drug compounds will be screened with the proprietary Chemetics discovery technology system developed by Nuevolution A/S (Copenhagen, DK). Chemetics is a patent protected hybrid of proven wet chemistry and molecular biology, which, the company claims, represents the ultimate fragment-based drug discovery technology. This platform enables rapid synthesis and DNA-tagging of hundreds of millions of chemically diverse drug-like small molecule compounds and the efficient screening of these, facilitating the identification of potent drug leads at unprecedented quantity, quality, and speed compared to existing drug discovery technologies.

The more than 100 validated drug targets have been identified using the Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (The Woodlands, TX, USA) Genome5000 program. The target genes were found by evaluating the physiological and behavioral function for nearly 5,000 human genes by studying the corresponding mouse genes in knockout animals.

"Our proprietary Chemetics platform uses innovative DNA labeling to allow fragment-based drug screening at an unprecedented scale,” said Dr. Alex Gouliaev, CEO of Nuevolution A/S. "We believe this generates high quality hits and leads far more rapidly and reliably than current ultra high throughput methods. Combining our platform with Lexicon's highly validated target portfolio represents an exceptional drug discovery opportunity and we very much look forward to bringing together Lexicon's expertise in biology and ours in chemistry, creating a synergistic biotech alliance.”

"This important alliance is designed to accelerate Lexicon's ability to move from novel knockout validated targets to drug candidates as we continue to build our pipeline of innovative products,” said Dr. Brian Zambrowicz, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Lexicon.


Related Links:
Nuevolution A/S
Lexicon Pharmaceuticals