Peakdale and De Novo announce positive results

Just six months into their strategic collaboration, Peakdale Molecular and De Novo Pharmaceuticals have announced significant results.

The focus of the alliance is the design and supply of novel compounds, specifically targeted towards the discovery of new molecules active at G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs).

As a result of the collaboration, a variety of family-based extended pharmacophores have been developed, using De Novo's proprietary technology, QUASI2, for sub-families of the GPCR class of biological targets. These are said to have shown excellent enrichments when used to identify known ligands from the World Drug Index .

Proprietary Peakdale chemistry has now been encoded into SkelGen -2, De Novo's structure generation technology, and is being used to generate novel structures within each of the extended pharmacophores. Working in conjunction with De Novo's computational chemists, Peakdale's medicinal chemistry team is currently analysing, refining and prioritising these structures. The results will form the basis for a series of GPCR targeted libraries that will be launched in April 2004.

De Novo has proprietary expertise for the in silico de novo design of novel chemotypes against biological enzyme and receptor targets. Its proprietary technology, Quasi2, allows the generation of feature rich, 'extended pharmacophore' models from known active ligands leading to drug design in the absence of protein structural data. Using its validated de novo structure generation technology, SkelGen-2, De Novo is able to effectively sample the diversity of chemical space providing novel chemotype designs to address a given target.

Kimberley Morrison, Peakdale's CEO, commented: 'We are delighted with the results from the project to date, which fully endorse our decision to embark upon this strategic alliance. As envisaged, both companies have been able to draw upon their respective skills in chemistry synthesis and molecular design. We are looking to publish our approach to GPCR family-based extended pharmacophores in December or January and will disclose more details of the collaboration to coincide with the launch of the libraries next year.'

Steve Beasley, chief operating officer of De Novo Pharmaceuticals, added: 'Our alliance with Peakdale draws on the strengths of both to tackle a significant problem within NCE research directed towards receptor targets. We look forward to driving this collaboration forward for the benefit of our pharmaceutical partners.'