Jun 09, 2011 – The preclinical drug-discovery process requires the screening of millions of small organic molecules to find a suitable lead compound for one ultimately successful outcome. A lead compound in drug discovery is a substance that displays pharmacological and/or biological activity and whose chemical structure is used as a starting point for chemical modifications in order to improve potency, selectivity or pharmacokinetic parameters.
Based on current data, effective lead compounds have lower molecular complexity when compared with drugs. They also have a smaller number of rings and rotatable bonds, lower molecular weight and they are more polar. The concept of leadlikeness is already having a significant impact on the design of chemical libraries.
Lead-like library, which is available from OTAVA Ltd., is a universal screening library containing about 57,000 compounds. This library is an integral part of the OTAVA chemical libraries and it can be used for high-throughput screening in addition to OTAVA’s Drug-like Green Collection and Fragment Library. Comparing to Drug-like Green Collection, this Lead-like library has lower molecular weights (MW 160-400), smaller number of rotatable bonds (= 8) and number of hydrogen bond donors (= 4) and acceptors (= 8). It is done to extend potential chemical space for further lead optimization.
Any biologically unstable compounds and compounds comprising any reactive groups or atoms different to O, N, C, H, Br, I, Cl, F, or S were removed from the library.
This Lead-like library from OTAVA is of great help for medicinal chemists in achieving positive drug discovery outcome in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Otava Ltd.
P.O. Box 88
Kyiv 187, 03187
Ukraine
Phone/Fax : +380 44 522 24 58
