Conformetrix Services

 

Platinum | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Analytical NMR

 

Conformetrix offers limited access to its technology to key drug discovery companies, allowing them to evaluate the power of true ligand-based discovery, with a view to eventual collaborations or co-development agreements. This ranges from lower resolution Bronze-level analysis to our highest resolution / accuracy Gold-level analysis.

 

Outlined below is a brief guide as to how these different levels of 3D-structure resolution are best applied to specific processes in pre-clinical drug discovery. Please browse our capabilities using the links above and contact us for further information.

 

Virtual screening

Compared to purely theoretically derived 3D-structures, an experimentally determined Conformetrix Gold-level structure is far more likely to provide high-value virtual hits. Indeed it is likely to be more accurate than even a reverse-engineered pharmacophore map derived from a co-crystal of the protein-bound ligand.

 

Hit characterisation

It is often extremely difficult to identify common pharmacophore motifs amongst groups of unrelated hit chemistries, irrespective of whether they've been selected in silico or in vitro. Conformetrix Bronze-level structures provide a means of quickly and simply getting to this key information.

 

Lead optimisation / QSAR

A Silver-level structure provides sufficient resolution to quantify the preferred 3D-structures of lead series, helping rationalise what might otherwise be inexplicable QSAR data. It can also help guide optimisation strategies, particularly when overlayed on a 4D-template structure of the natural ligand: highlighting areas of deviation or identifying where to add functional groups to provide a better match.

 

Drugging GPCRs & ion-channels

(and other intractable therapeutic targets)

Conformetrix technology finally offers a viable alternative to structure-based approaches to discovery. A Gold-level structure of the natural ligand for ANY protein target provides a sufficiently accurate 3D-blueprint for designing NCEs and can be obtained in a fraction of the time of crystallographic data.

 

IP protection / Competitor drug analysis

The information provided by Conformetrix Gold-level structures is uniquely powerful at informing IP protection strategies: determining where modifications can usefully be made and helping Medicinal Chemists to focus in on those derivatives which are likely to be of most value.