Hit-to-Lead

We regularly evaluate hit tractability—following large screening campaigns of in-house or customer screening collections. Our creative team of experienced medicinal chemists takes advantage of modern compound design tools, well-designed screening cascades, and state-of-the-art synthetic methods to generate high-quality lead compounds.

Our chemists start with your hit molecules—emerging from biochemical, cellular, phenotypic, fragment, virtual, or any other screening method. During hit-to-lead, we:

  • use extensive medchem expertise to vet hit lists
  • apply in silico prediction tools to ensure that only the best starting points are advanced
  • triage new derivatives through well-defined characterization cascades

We pride ourselves on our experience with a broad variety of chemistries (e.g., rule-of-five compliant, macrocycles, peptides). During hit-to-lead work, speed of synthesis is paramount, and automation and parallel synthesis are used whenever possible. Up-to-date knowledge of heterocyclic and natural product chemistry allows our chemists to design safe and effective synthetic routes, even with the most challenging small-molecule projects.

Whether it’s ligand- or structure-based design, our creative team of chemists emphasizes rapid and broad chemical space expansion to ensure that a high-quality and novel chemical matter is discovered.