News | December 11, 2000

Merck, NeoGenesis ink research deal

Source: Merck & Company, Inc.

NeoGenesis technologies will help identify, optimize chemical discovery leads

On December 11, NeoGenesis Inc. (Cambridge, MA) and Merck & Co. Inc. (Whitehouse Station, N.J) announced a research collaboration under which NeoGenesis will use its Chemical Genomics technology platform to identify and optimize chemical compounds for new drug discovery leads selected from protein families across a broad range of therapeutic areas.

The Chemical Genomics discovery platform is based on NeoGenesis' core technology—Automated Ligand Identification System (ALIS)—a scalable, generic system for rapidly screening large numbers of poorly characterized, disease-associated genomic targets, plus other products. ALIS identifies small molecule ligands of high affinity and high selectivity against the full range of protein classes.

NeoGenesis technologies included in the deal are:

  • Mass-Coded NeoMorph libraries, which integrate extensive computational analysis, chemical insight and medicinal relevance to produce diversity and biological specificity. NeoGenesis' rapidly expanding inventory of screening libraries includes more than 10 million diverse compounds.
  • Quantized Surface Complementarity (QSC), a chemically and biologically intuitive informatics system that features a unified representation of small molecule libraries and protein binding sites. QSC allows NeoGenesis and its partners to explore the diversity and complementarity of both small molecules and protein surfaces in a unified framework to enable the rapid matching of genomic protein families with therapeutically relevant small molecules.

For more information: Satish Jindal, President, NeoGenesis, 1900 West Park Dr., Westborough, MA 01581. Tel: 508-616-9876. Fax: 508-616-9880.

Edited by Angelo DePalma
Managing Editor, Drug Discovery Online and Pharmaceutical Online
adepalma@vertical.net