Compugen announced the establishment of a subsidiary company, Keddem Bioscience Ltd., which focuses on the discovery of small molecules for pharmaceutical purposes. This activity that took place within Compugen acted as the company's chemistry division. The offices of the subsidiary and its laboratories are located in Ashkelon
Compugen announced the establishment of a subsidiary company, Keddem Bioscience Ltd., which focuses on the discovery of small molecules for pharmaceutical purposes. This activity that took place within Compugen acted as the company's chemistry division. The offices of the subsidiary and its laboratories are located in Ashkelon.
Kedem's goal is to significantly improve the chances of success in the development of therapeutic products by developing and implementing a technological platform that will allow, in principle, to design small molecules active against any target protein.
"This initiative is another example of the power obtained from merging abilities from the fields of physics, mathematics and computer science with disciplines that are at the base of pharmaceutical research," says Dr. Mor Amitai, president and CEO of Compugen. "We are satisfied that this activity has matured to the point where the establishment of a subsidiary company is requested in order to provide the adequate opportunity to realize all the potential inherent in it. The considerations in separating the activity and establishing the subsidiary company are similar to our decision, at the time, regarding the establishment of the Abujin company. This will allow Compugen to focus on the field of biology and continue to create discovery engines for therapeutic proteins and diagnostic markers."
Kedem's research team includes scientists from the fields of physics, mathematics, chemistry and biochemistry. The company will be jointly managed by Dr. Dror Ofer and Dr. Arnon Levy.
"Our technology is designed to find small molecules that will be used as drug candidates and that will fit any target protein, including what are called "non-druggable" ones." said Dr. Dror Ofer, joint CEO of Kedem Biosciences. "In our opinion, the discovery of new and effective molecules is the bottleneck of the pharmaceutical industry, which will most likely not be solved with the help of existing approaches, but will require a new scientific methodology like ours. In order to face such a serious challenge, a repeated examination of the basic assumptions of the field is not a luxury, but a necessity. We are excited about the opportunity created to continue developing this innovative scientific approach within a separate company."
The currently accepted method for identifying a small molecule suitable for a potential target protein is to use extremely large libraries of molecules that are scanned against the target protein to check if something will stick. In this trial and error method, the percentage of success is small, the trial time is long and the cost is high. According to many, this is the most important limiting factor facing the pharmaceutical industry today.
Kedem's innovative approach is based on the creation of an exhaustive, but relatively small and well-designed series of molecules and an algorithmic platform. The series will contain less than one hundred thousand molecules, most of them new compounds that differ in a number of ways from molecules found in existing libraries of molecules. Although one hundred thousand compounds is a small number compared to the millions that usually exist in libraries of therapeutic compounds, Kedem's series is designed to be exhaustive and cover the entire relevant chemical space and therefore will suit any target protein.
After the precursor molecules are synthesized, they will be used in a scanning process that includes an experiment to test the function of the target protein. Using unique algorithms to analyze the results of the experiment, the platform is designed to provide comprehensive XNUMXD information about the active site of the target protein. This information enables the design of a variety of effective inhibitors that meet desired drug-like properties.
