Move Quickly and Smoothly Through Pharmaceutical Drug Design

Pharmaceutical Drug Discovery is tasked with the challenge of identifying promising candidates which exhibit pharmacological activity towards a disease target, typically a protein. Candidate compounds can come from a variety of sources including proprietary internal libraries, libraries of compounds from research and academic institutes, isolation from natural products, rational drug design, and virtual libraries. These compounds are screened for activity and positive results become hits. Promising hits undergo further studies and optimization, ultimately producing a New Chemical Entity (NCE) which passes on to Drug Development. It will take thousands of compounds, each with a number of screenings, to produce a few compounds for Drug Development.

Dionex helps the process move smoothly, and in a timely fashion, by providing IC and LC solutions that are not only accurate and precise but also fast and reliable.

Working Closely with Chemists to Ensure Productive Solutions

Pharmaceutical drug discovery depends on libraries of compounds which can be screened for specific pharmacological activity. These libraries may be composed of compounds synthesized internally by the pharmaceutical company or “rented” from an outside source. An important function related to drug design is the maintenance these libraries which are obviously important and valuable assets. Routine analyses must be performed to verify the integrity of many thousands of compounds.

Liquid chromatography (LC) and ion chromatography (IC) are indispensible tools in the routine validation of compound libraries with speed, sensitivity and reliability essential system attributes. Innovation and quality have made Dionex a leader in the worldwide separations industry. Our expertise allows us to work closely with chemists and biochemists to ensure solutions such as RSLC, x2 Dual, and RFIC provide the necessary benefits.

Chromeleon DCMS-link Provides State-of-the-Art LC/MS/MS Performance

Drug discovery involves the screening of vast libraries of compounds using a variety of assays to identify which compounds exhibit a desirable pharmacological activity towards the disease target. Some of the assays are cell-based, which utilize technology such as plate readers that can achieve analytical throughput in the range of samples/second. Other biochemical assays require greater sensitivity and selectivity.

For these applications, LC/MS is the tool of choice. With its high throughput capability, the Ultimate RSLC and x2 Duals systems are ideal frontends for fast-scanning, tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Chromeleon software’s DCMS link integrates instrument control into a variety of MS data platforms to provide state-of-the-art LC/MS/MS performance.

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