Medicilon’s Chemistry department has more than 100 chemists, who are experienced in the cooperation with major domestic and international pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Our services cover a variety of research interests in novel drug research, including target validation, hits evaluation, lead optimization, candidate nomination, preclinical development and IND filing.
Medicilon has completed dozens of drug research projects for clients and successfully identified several drug candidates for clinical trials. Our team provides the following services:
Target Assessment – Drug Targets
Lead Optimization
Clinical Candidate Nomination
Computer Aided Drug Design
SAR Study
Hit discovery technologies range from traditional high-throughput screening to affinity selection of large libraries, fragment-based techniques and computer-aided de novo design, many of which have been extensively reviewed. Development of quality leads using hit confirmation and hit-to-lead approaches present their own challenges, depending on the hit discovery method used to identify the initial hits.
For hit identification, some information about either the target protein or an active compound is necessary. In the case of a known structure of the protein, a virtual screening of compound libraries leads to virtual hits which will be synthesised and tested afterwards or tested immediately.
If the structure of the natural substrate is known, a ligand based approach will be accomplished. The computer searches for similar compounds and the resulting hits are checked for drug like properties.
Current screening methods in drug discovery include either phenotypic cellular assays with functional read‐outs, or biochemical assays requiring the generation of target‐expressing stable cell lines, and purification of target to screen against a compound library. Secondary and profiling assays are then used to determine compound cell permeability and cytotoxicity. This process can be extremely difficult for some targets such as those forming protein–protein interactions or membrane receptors.
– Protein target can be membrane bound, difficult to produce for standard biochemical assays, and difficult to purify;
– Hit and lead compounds and focused libraries can be screened against protein target within physiological environment;
– Compound cell permeability, specificity and cytotoxicity are assessed in one process;
– Process can be upscaled to screen hundreds of compounds in a few hours.
Primary and secondary medium to high throughput screening in drug discovery
Target identification or validation for hit phenotypic screening
Email : marketing@medicilon.com
Tel : +86 021 58591500
Tips : Above is part of hit identification in drug discovery and drug target identification methods. You can also CONTACT US with any question or enquiry you may have. We will be happy to discuss your needs in detail and design an appropriate plan of action.
marketing@medicilon.com
