ChemNavigator offers secure online access to 600,000+ compounds for lead expansion

Today's discovery chemists have a wealth of print and online catalogs from which to order chemical tools they need to run reactions: in a nutshell, reagents, and solvents. Print- and Internet-based catalogs abound for commodity and specialty chemicals. Getting targeted, specific, purified compounds for lead expansion is a bit more difficult, however. You can "subscribe" to several free databases from specialty suppliers, but you may not find what you need. Or you can log on to ChemNavigator.com and search from a database of more than 600,000 structures from seven leading compound library specialty firms.

ChemNavigator serves as a portal for lead expansion compound suppliers, but to practicing chemists it is much more than that. ChemNavigator offers, to anyone with a Web browser, sophisticated but easy-to-use structure-based searching from its suppliers' compound libraries.

Tad Hurst, ChemNavigator's chief scientist, explaining the difference between his company's chemical offerings and those of conventional chem suppliers.

Let's say you've discovered a structure with interesting activity. First enter the structure, then apply search criteria such as:

• Degree of acceptable similarity between the hit and library candidates
  
• Sub-structure searching based on the hit's backbone
  
• Substitution for any hydrogen
  
• Application of conventional "drug-like" qualities
  
• Exclusion of non drug-like atoms

After hitting the search button, users view what appears to be a catalog page but which, according to Tad Hurst, ChemNavigator's chief scientific officer, is like no other catalog page you'll ever see. "We prefer to call it a hit list," Hurst told DrugDiscovery Online. "Users can now pick the compounds they want and take advantage of extensive cross-referencing to other compound sets and literature citations."

The hit list gives prices and availability for all known, previously synthesized compounds. "Click on the ones you want, select a payment method, and you're done," Hurst explained.

Most compounds are synthetic, but according to Hurst one of the most popular database sets contains only natural products. He's not talking "jungle juice," but highly purified compounds suitable for screening.

What about structures not in the database? ChemNavigator hopes to have a million compounds in its database within a few months, but even that may not be enough. If that's the case ChemNavigator will hook you up with a supplier who will custom-synthesize the compound for you, in whatever quantity you need. One milligram is typically enough for screening, but ChemNavigator's suppliers are only too happy to provide more.

For more information: Tad Hurst, ChemNavigator, 6166 Nancy Ridge Dr., San Diego, CA 92121. Tel: 858-450-9740. Fax: 858-625-2377.

By Angelo DePalma
Managing Editor, Drug Discovery Online