PhycoScreen HTS - natural product drug discovery

Exalpha Biologicals Inc. (Boston) has released PhycoScreen HTS, a series of modules composed of pre-fractionated extracts of Exalpha's cyanobacteria and microalgae collections. Cyanobacteria and microalgae offer a wealth of novel chemical diversity for lead compound discovery. With more than 60% of the top selling pharmaceuticals beginning as natural products, secondary metabolites, or their derivatives, Exalpha is banking on its microalgae collection to serve as a rich source for pharmaceutical discovery.

Screening crude extracts of natural products leads to an unacceptably high hit rate in most molecular-based assays (>5%). Unlike natural product libraries that contain crude extracts and therefore generate false positives and false negatives, the PhycoScreen library is pre-fractionated to achieve a manageable number of meaningful hits (~1-2 hits per target). Each module represents 40 unique strains of microalgae/cyanobacteria in 800 wells (ten plates of 80 wells each) suitable for medium and high throughput screening. Each well contains approximately 2.5 compounds.

The PhycoScreen library is generated by induction of microalgae and cyanobacteria cultures and therefore also contains secondary metabolites, increasing the chemical diversity included for your new chemical entity discovery. All of our strains are preserved allowing us to provide more material readily.

PhycoScreen is not only affordable (average cost per compound/screen is 98 cents—based on a minimum of 5 screens per well) but it is also offered to clients with no licensing agreements, no milestone payments, no royalties, and no strings attached.

For more information: Felice A. de Jong, VP of Drug Discovery, Exalpha Biologicals Inc., 20 Hampden St., Boston, MA 02119. Tel: 617-445-6463. Fax: 617-989-0404.

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