Hit-to-Lead

Fragment based drug discovery has proven a valuable and complementary technique to HTS, particularly for delivering compounds against challenging targets such as protein-protein interactions and proteases. However, the early stages of evolving the weak, often mM, hits derived from fragment screens can be particularly challenging. In many cases corporations have been structured to efficiently evolve the M hits typically derived from HTS. Moreover, medicinal chemists are much more experienced in working with these compounds. As a result, early stage compounds from FBDD efforts may be underutilized. In order to avoid this situation, ZoBio offers complete, turnkey hit-to-lead projects. The output of such a project would include:

• Orthogonally validated fragment hits against the target.
• A predetermined number of independent series with best potency in the low μM range (lead-like compounds) and complete SAR analysis.
• Validated biophysical assays.
• Where appropriate structural biology enabled (X-ray or NMR)