Enabling and Accelerating Fragment-based Drug Discovery An Excellent Opportunity To Combine Innovation and Education

One of the most promising strategies for discovering our future medications is via fragment-based lead discovery (FBLD). FBLD involves the screening of libraries of small molecules to first identify weak binders to essential target proteins of diseases. These binders are then synthetically matured to larger, more potent inhibitors/leads via medicinal chemistry design efforts. However, there are major bottlenecks to achieving this critical step which have discouraged many pharmaceutical scientists from pursuing this approach. This is because experimental techniques are notoriously unreliable at properly characterizing weak binders at the required high concentrations. We propose to tackle this issue, and exploit educational opportunities, by redefining the fundamental techniques at each step of FBLD. Libraries will be designed, new NMR screening strategies implemented, analysis software will be developed, and an innovative NMR KdSAR cycle will be introduced. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Steven Laplante

Student:

Yann Ayotte

Partner:

NMX Research and Solutions Inc

Discipline:

Environmental sciences

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Program: