Chemogenomics: Medicinal Chemistry Meets Pharmacology at a Genome Scale

Jordi Mestres, Head Chemogenomics Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

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Launch presentation

Abstract

Natural products are the most consistently successful source of drug leads, but their use has declined. Partly, this relates to supply of sufficient quantities of suitably diverse chemicals. This can be addressed by virtual screening databases of natural products, but it can be difficult to access samples of rare compounds. The growing compound collection and academic chemical database in Strathclyde’s Drug Discovery Portal (www.ddp.strath.ac.uk) alleviates this problem by creating a link between structures in the computer and the chemists in academia with samples. The Portal enables chemists to upload structures and biologists to upload targets and both parties to initiate advanced in silico screening and hit identification. The Portal provides access not only to exceptionally high chemical diversity for new hits, but to the chemistry expertise that produced the compounds in the first place, making rapid follow-up feasible

The structural varieties of small molecules derived from natural products offer continuing promise for drug discovery campaigns. Many of the traditional difficulties associated with natural products have been overcome or sidestepped. It can be expected that use of in silico approaches with databases enriched in natural products will be a productive means to generate novel leads for future drug discovery programmes.

Launch presentation