ChemNavigator extends partnership agreement with Semafore Pharmaceuticals for Virtual Screening Program

06-28-2004: ChemNavigator announced that Semafore has signed a new agreement to work with ChemNavigator in the area of virtual screening for novel oncology-target compounds. The new agreement is based on the successful outcome of an oncology virtual screening program initiated with Semafore Pharmaceuticals in June of 2003.

"We are confident that our interaction with ChemNavigator will help us move forward rapidly with our drug discovery program," said Joe Garlich, CEO and president of Semafore. "As shown by our extended agreement, we are very pleased with ChemNavigator's unique capabilities and the support they provide."

Under the terms of the new agreement, ChemNavigator will apply its proprietary virtual screening technology, 3DPL(TM), to an oncology target within Semafore's signal transduction model to identify likely binding compounds from within the millions of commercially accessible drug-like chemical samples tracked within ChemNavigator's iResearch Library. ChemNavigator will deliver the screening results to Semafore in the form of a database of compounds that contains multiple chemistry classes that Semafore may test to identify new potential drug leads.

Developed by Dr. Tad Hurst and his research group at ChemNavigator, 3DPL technology is used to rapidly identify drug-like compounds that are much more likely to show biological activity against a drug target than compounds selected through traditional methods. The technology works by simulating the interactions between flexible drug-like molecules and the entire surface of a 3D protein model. "At analysis speeds of up to 10 compounds per second across an entire protein's surface, 3DPL(TM) is a generation beyond other virtual screening technologies", states Dr. Hurst, chief technical officer of ChemNavigator, "3DPL's strategy of considering the entire protein surface allows it to identify potential biologically active compounds overlooked by other virtual screening techniques."