DrugFinder: Providing Superior Inhibitors

InhibOx Limited announces the launch of a free hit identification service, devised by Professor Graham Richards of the Chemistry Department of the University. It will enable research groups in academia and biotechnology companies to exploit an increasingly important starting point for novel drug discovery, namely, crystal structures of target proteins with an inhibitor bound in the active site. The project follows on from the extremely successful screensaver project run from the University of Oxford Chemistry Department (http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk) by Professor Richards in collaboration with computational chemistry company InhibOx and the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR), with sponsorship at various times from Intel Corporation, Microsoft and IBM. The screensaver project which ran from 2001‐2007 (http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer) involved over 3.5 million personal computers in more than 200 countries and was the world’s biggest computational chemistry experiment. A database of some three billion molecules was screened and a number of predicted hits were subsequently synthesized and tested with very promising results. Virtual screening clearly works.

The NFCR and Inhibox have joined forces again to offer a service using InhibOx’s inhouse computing facilities and databases of molecular structures. By going to a web site (http://www.inhibox.com/drugfinder), researchers in universities or biotechnology companies will be able to submit a structure with a bound inhibitor. Inhibox will screen its small molecule database against the target and then provide to the academic or biotechnology company potentially superior inhibitors. Any intellectual property will be treated confidentially and results will belong to the group providing the crystal structure.

The screening service will be provided through three service levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold. The Bronze service will be entirely free of charge and will identify up to 100 compounds from the database which are similar to the bound inhibitor, but offer the possibility of new scaffolds and chemistry.

The Silver service mirrors the Bronze, but includes searching a larger database and will return a larger number (up to 1000) of novel potential inhibitors.

About InhibOx
InhibOx is a computational drug discovery company. The company’s primary objective is to develop novel and effective computational methods for drug discovery in order to improve the productivity of lead and candidate identification. InhibOx was founded in 2001 by Professor W. Graham Richards, chairman of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and world leading computational chemist. The company grew from the outstandingly successful screen saver project which involved some 3.5 million personal computers in over 200 countries: the world’s biggest computational chemistry experiment finding lead compounds to inhibit cancer targets, anthrax and smallpox. Subsequently, the company has built up a significant technology platform. Its main ongoing research activities comprise the development of entirely novel computational discovery methods and associated with this, the development of Scopius a very large database of chemical structures. For more information, please refer to (http://www.inhibox.com).

About NFCR
The NFCR was founded in 1973 to support basic science cancer research in the laboratory. The NFCR’s program of basic science cancer research conducted at both the cellular and molecular levels is leading to better prevention, earlier diagnostic techniques, new treatments, and eventually a cure for cancer. By supporting the best ideas of the best minds, and by facilitating collaboration among scientists, advances in one field contribute to discoveries in another. This is what NFCR’s “Laboratory Without Walls” makes possible. Since 1973 NFCR has provided more than $250 million to fund discovery‐oriented research that has played a key role in many current breakthroughs in the prevention, diagnosis and new treatments of all types of cancer. In 2000 the NFCR funded a virtual centre, the Centre for Computational Drug Discovery, directed from Oxford University’s Department of Chemistry by Professor Graham Richards. For more information, please refer to (http://www.nfcr.org).

http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/news/DrugFinder.pdf