Establishing a world-class biophysics platform that will enable and accelerate the discovery of leads for launching drug-discovery programs

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Project of $1,389,020 over 3 years

• Supported by CQDM through: Ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et de l’Énergie du Québec (MEIE)
• And by a co-funding partner:
  • NMX Research and Solutions
  • Anji Pharmaceuticals
  • Mitacs

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Challenge

The most critical step in discovering future medications is the identification of the initial hit compounds (“leads”) that interact with target proteins, and which have the desired properties. The search for and validation of potential lead compounds is a major challenge for launching drug discovery programs as this process requires highly specialized expertise, expensive equipment and infrastructure, and vast chemical resources. Moreover, classical screening assays are often contaminated with false-positives and false-negatives, and available experimental techniques are notoriously unreliable at properly characterizing weak hits at the high concentrations required.

Solution

The team proposes to develop cross-technology strategies that exploit a thorough exploration of the advantages and limitations of a broad range of biophysics tools to reveal typical and unusual natural phenomena of ligand and protein targets. This platform will be established by creating a core biophysics foundation that seamlessly employs input from various multidisciplinary sources and produces high-quality lead products that readily flow into lead optimization campaigns. The team of prof. LaPlante will expand the results of a previous CQDM SynergiQc by exploring and incorporating new biophysical tools and combination strategies and testing them on various protein and nucleic acid target types. Currently, there are no complete biophysics lead discovery platforms in Canada and only a dozen worldwide. The central goal is to implement a pragmatic interdisciplinary workflow with tools that maximize the discovery of druggable leads that are then ready for lead optimization efforts.

Expected Achievements /Impacts

This proposal will build the foundation for establishing a world-class biophysics platform that will enable and accelerate the discovery of leads for launching new drug discovery programs and biotech start-ups. The project will have a significant impact for Québec’s biotechnology industry and for academic drug discovery, bringing many social and economic benefits to all the involved partners and promoting Quebec as an international leader in biopharmaceutical research. The platform will be an innovative, full-service solution accessible to academic and industrial actors and will develop numerous business opportunities and collaborations within the life science ecosystem in Quebec.