Praecis' DirectSelect technology designed to facilitate drug discovery

By Lisa Kerner

Erie, Pa., March 15 - Praecis Pharmaceuticals Inc. said its chemistry-driven DirectSelect technology will facilitate the drug discovery process by using libraries of more than 5 billion compounds of small molecule drug candidates.

Praecis' vice president of chemistry Dr. Barry Morgan presented an update on the development of DirectSelect at the Drug Discovery Technology Europe 2006 meeting in London, according to a company news release.

DirectSelect facilitates the drug discovery process through encoded libraries of drug-like structures that can be rapidly screened to identify individual structures, or families of structures, with affinity for a macromolecular target, the company said.

Accessing structurally diverse families should improve the likelihood of identifying a lead molecule with a favorable safety profile in vivo.

DirectSelect is based on the increased numeric size and chemical space interrogated by a macromolecular target, increasing the odds of identifying hits with higher affinity and enhanced selectivity.

In a proof-of-concept screening of the DirectSelect libraries against three kinase and one protease target, novel hit families were identified and hits were validated through re-synthesis and testing in biochemical and cell-based assays.

According to Morgan, these data demonstrate the broad utility of DirectSelect to rapidly identify and validate novel hit families to pharmaceutical targets in approximately a one month time frame.

Praecis said it intends to use its DirectSelect technology to support pharmaceutical partnerships in drug discovery and development and to expand its own proprietary development pipeline.

Praecis is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel compounds with the potential to address unmet medical needs or improve existing therapies. The company is based in Waltham, Mass.

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