BioCentury
ARTICLE | Cover Story

In silico drug design

January 24, 2013 8:00 AM UTC

Researchers at the University of Dundee and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have created a computational algorithm that mines medicinal chemistry literature to predict new ligands that bind specific combinations of G protein-coupled receptors.1 Ex Scientia Ltd. was spun out of Dundee to commercialize the findings and already has two deals in place related to the screening technology.

Developing a small molecule that binds a predefined combination of targets is at best a time-consuming medicinal chemistry effort and often has proven flat-out impossible...