Chemical Genomics Center (LCGC) Pharma Discovery Research Tool

Chemical collections and methods for rapid storage, retrieval and assay are vital for new drug discovery.

LIMR Chemical Genomics Center’s (LCGC) large chemical collection covers a unique structural space not covered by other pharma or commercial libraries. LCGC has developed a variety of hardware and software solutions to enable efficient, low-cost drug screens directed to any molecular target of interest. Together these LCGC assets offer a complete low-cost infrastructure to R&D entities seeking to engage in drug discovery.

LCGC’s technologies offer multiple sources of value

1. Ownership of novel chemicals.
2. Ready access to many commercial or other known chemicals, including FDA-approved drugs.
3. Patent protection of new therapeutic targets through validation with a small molecular inhibitor. Critical for drug target protection even if a drug discovery campaign is not desired: drug target patents are vulnerable to invalidation without demonstrating a proof-of-concept inhibitor or agonist.
4. NARS Robotic Storage-And-Retrieval Freezer: A 2000 ft³ robotic freezer to store, retrieve, and format chemicals for drug screening. Enables rapid high-integrity management of large chemical collections up to 10,000,000 compounds, without freeze-thaw steps that degrade many chemicals.
5. NARS storage plates: Fully addressable 384-well plates with moveable wells (see above).
   Enables rapid formatting of drug screening plates without freeze-thaw (up to 10,000 picks / day).
6. Software: Algorithms that deepen uses for NARS-based drug discovery system (below).
7. A complete infrastructure of chemicals, hardware and software for early-stage drug discovery. Suitable as a one-stop shop for government laboratories, private foundations, or universities.

Few biomedical R&D organizations have the capability to identify proprietary new drug leads. Intra-institutional collaborations are difficult due to intellectual property limitations and concerns. Rival methods for preclinical drug discovery (in silico, artificial intelligence) are partially effective at best, posing risks from algorithm bias and requiring intensive time, expertise, and access to large data sets for computer data learning. LCGC’s technologies offer unique tools that, employed together, can enable any R&D organization to start to engage in drug discovery.

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