SAN DIEGO, CA - Structural
bioinformatics, Inc. (SBI) and
ChemNavigator announced today the signing of an agreement to combine SBI's proprietary technologies in three-dimensional computational
proteomics with ChemNavigator's proprietary technologies in
chemistry. The collaborative agreement will greatly facilitate the rapid identification of new
drug candidates. Under the terms of the agreement, SBI and its customers can use ChemNavigator's 3-D database of two million drug-like compounds to screen in silico against the 2600 3-D proprietary protein structures in SBI's drug target database. SBI and
ChemNavigator will share in revenues generated from the combined use of their technologies.
"Every
drug discovery program, whether in large pharmaceutical companies or small biotechs, is focused on identifying better
lead compounds quickly," said Scott Hutton, president and CEO of ChemNavigator. "SBI has established a powerful program for efficient, well-focused drug discovery, including the characterization of active sites for families of
proteins. Screening our compound library against these active sites will result in the quick identification of drug candidates that can be moved into lead optimization programs in months rather than years."
SBI will offer customers access to ChemNavigator's database through SBI's
genes to Leads® service, which rapidly identifies new drug candidates, while reducing
synthesis and acquisition by 100-1,000 fold. Employing advanced supercomputer technology, SBI converts nucleic acid or amino acid sequences of clinically relevant
drug targets into 3-D protein structures of x-ray crystallographic quality. The company then maps the binding sites for potential drug candidates, creating templates for high-throughput virtual
screening of large 3-D
databases of compounds. This service increases the probability of identifying
molecules with greater specificity, more effectively harnessing the full range of molecular diversity.
"ChemNavigator's technology and resources complement our unique expertise in the structural determination of drug targets and will significantly advance both our internal and external drug discovery programs," said Ed Maggio, chairman, president and CEO of Structural Bioinformatics, Inc. "We will provide the protein drug targets and the technology for in silico screening, and ChemNavigator will provide a powerful cheminformatics platform and its worldwide network of
chemistry suppliers."
Dr. Maggio added, "The first applications of our joint technologies will be applied to our ongoing research of clinical targets related to
cancer,
leukemia, and
diabetes."
ChemNavigator brings its powerful, proprietary cheminformatics platform, called the i
Research™ System, to this equation. Life scientists use the iResearch System to accomplish in seconds the Herculean task of comparing large databases of chemical structures and identify compounds that meet certain criteria. In addition, ChemNavigator has working relationships with more than 30 international chemistry suppliers and is the source for the world's largest collection of accessible drug-like compounds. It is important to note that all the compounds in ChemNavigator's library are commercially accessible, meaning they have been made at least once before, as opposed to virtual compounds that are created using
computer models and sometimes cannot be recreated in the laboratory.