UK firms advance GPCR project
Novo Pharma has made progress in identifying novel molecules
targeting G protein-coupled receptors.
A collaboration between contract research organisation Peakdale Molecular and fellow UK firm De Novo Pharmaceuticals has made progress in a project to identify novel molecules targeting G protein-coupled receptors.
The companies have identified a variety of family-based extended pharmacophores - the three-dimensional structure of atoms responsible for the biological activity of a drug molecule - which will form the basis of a series of GPCR-targeted compound libraries that will be launched in April of next year.
The six-month-old collaboration was set up to combine De Novo's in silico approach to designing novel compounds against biological enzyme and receptor targets with some additional, proprietary chemistries developed by Peakdale for the generation of intermediates and pharmacophores.
De Novo's Quasi2 technology allows the generation of pharmacophore models from known active ligands, effectively allowing drug design in the absence of protein structural data. A structure-generation technology, SkelGen-2, also allows the firm to sample the diversity of chemicalspace providing novelchemotype designs to address a given target.
Peakdale's chemistry has now been encoded into SkelGen-2 and is being used to generate novel structures within each of the extended pharmacophores. The work should be published early next year.
