Chemogenomics

NQuiX are experts in the field of chemogenomics/chemical biology. These state-of-the art methods can address a wide range of issues in early drug discovery such as:

  • Identification of active molecules for new, “intractable” or “orphan” targets;
  • Prediction of off-target activities, be they potential side-effects or opportunities for drug “repositioning” / therapeutically useful activity combination profiles;
  • Prediction of compound binding mode(s) at the target(s); and
  • Identification of the underlying mechanism of action.

The methods exploit the vast swathes of data being generated by a number of recent advances in the industry, such as:

  • Sequencing (Genetics)
  • High-Throughput Chemistry (Synthesis)
  • High-Throughput and High-Content Screening (Molecular Biology/Pharmacology)
  • Structural Biology Consortia (X-ray Crystallography)

Importantly, ever-increasing amounts of these data are available in the public domain, primarily through a variety of “open-innovation” initiatives. This means the approach is no longer just the purview of large pharmaceutical companies and enables much deeper and more complex analyses to be performed. NQuiX has developed a series of sophisticated data-mining and statistical analysis methods to take full advantage of the available data and are using them to derive information which in turn is analysed to yield knowledge that can have a real impact on drug discovery.

To date, development has focused on G-Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) as a test-bed given their historical importance as drug targets but the methods are general and can be applied to any protein family or potentially across protein families. New “systems” under investigation include Nuclear Receptors (NRs) and certain enzyme families, notably methyltransferases (MTases) given their high-interest as epigenetic targets.