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The entry point for chemistry program within drug discovery research is generally the identification of molecules of high specificity with an adequate activity in a suitable target assay. Such initial hits can be generated in a number of ways. It is therefore important to employ alternative hit-identification strategies that are able to tackle a variety of biological macromolecular targets effectively, and to identify proprietary, synthetically tractable and pharmacologically relevant compounds rapidly. These methods can be subdivided into those that require very detailed ligand and/or target information, and those that do not. The former include techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and X-ray crystallography. Those strategies that do not require any prior information on target or ligand are using serendipity-based search strategies in either a given physical or virtual compound subset. Examples of random hit-identification strategies can be included by biophysical and biochemical testing that generally employ the method of detecting a molecular-binding event, usually in a high-throughput screening (HTS). BOC Sciences provides varieties of methods including NMR, X-ray crystallography and HTS for hit identification. |
