Zenobia: One Piece at a Time

By using a fragment-based discovery approach, Zenobia Therapeutics Inc. hopes to identify small molecule kinase inhibitors with the physiochemical properties required to address neurological disorders. The company's lead preclinical program is an antagonist of LRRK2, the most prevalent mutation associated with Parkinson's disease.

Zenobia's approach to fragment-based crystallographic screening builds upon a technique pioneered in 2000 by President and CSO Vicki Nienaber and colleagues during her time at Abbott Laboratories. Dubbed SAR by NMR - structure-activity relationships obtained using NMR spectroscopy - Zenobia uses X-ray crystallography and surface-based drug design to determine what combination of small chemical fragments produce the optimal binding orientation and potency...