Improving drug discovery the earliest stages
Transitions Drug MINOZAC
https://www.alz.org/preventionconference/pc2007/releases/61007_12am_homevisits.asp
Heres an excerpt from the article about MINOZAC, Transitions DRUG for TBI---- AZD----MCI ----- Epilepsy and others like MS & ALS (lately associated with CFL football).
IMPROVING DRUG DISCOVERY AT THE EARLIEST STAGES.
Over the past three decades, a problem has emerged in new drug discovery and development in which an increasing investment in research by industry and government is not proportionally reflected in successful new therapies. As such, a potential crisis is emerging, especially for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, which is projected to reach epidemic proportions in the near future.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) have made requests that academia and industry address the emerging crisis across multiple diseases by exploring strategies to improve efficiency and innovation in the drug discovery and development process.
D.M. Watterson, Ph.D., Co-Director of the Center for Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology, John G. Searle Endowed Chair in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, and Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, and colleagues from the Center for Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology (CDDCB) in Chicago, Ill., met with their colleagues in industry and at government agencies to identify how they could respond to the need for a more effective process. Together, they developed “smart chemistry” integrated with “smart biology” approaches to drug discovery that have a potential for making the process more efficient, facilitate innovation, and identify novel compounds that might alter disease progression.
The “smart chemistry” approach uses the information found in chemical and pharmacological databases to identify common strengths of molecules, defined by their physical properties, that turn out to be good drugs. The chemists mine these databases and propose testable hypotheses about what common themes among the physical properties of small molecules with different structures make them more drug-like. The identification of common themes aids in the design of new molecules.
“The ‘smart chemistry’ approach to discovery allows a better fit between biology and chemistry at both the virtual molecule design phase and in the assembly line phase of synthetic production and testing,” Watterson said. “This makes possible a more rapid and less costly response to biomedical needs as well as the generation of new molecules that are candidate compounds for development into new drugs.”
According to Watterson, the emphasis is on synthesizing compounds that have a higher probability to be stable, non-toxic, and cause fewer adverse effects. MINOZAC, a compound designed and synthesized in the Watterson laboratory, is an example of a novel compound developed using the integration of “smart chemistry” with “smart biology.” MINOZAC limits excessive production of brain proinflammatory cytokines, which are small proteins that can cause tissue injury, and improves neurologic outcomes in animal models of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, traumatic brain injury (TBI) and epilepsy. MINOZAC has been licensed to industry for clinical development.
Collaborative studies with Linda Van Eldik, Ph.D., co-director of CDDCB and a Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, are exploring animal models of Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders that have brain inflammation as a key contributor to disease progression. The ultimate goal is to develop a series of novel molecules which would be effective against a variety of disorders where brain inflammation and proinflammatory cytokine overproduction are involved.