Discovery Capabilities
Vernalis has a strong research capability focused on the discovery of drug development candidates to treat CNS diseases and cancer. The current therapeutic focus in CNS is pain and Parkinson’s disease, where, for the latter, both symptomatic and disease modifying strategies are being pursued. Emphasis is placed on drug targets for which there is both strong evidence of therapeutic relevance and which are amenable to the Company’s drug candidate discovery technology. Where appropriate, Vernalis seeks collaborations in this area, an example of which is its adenosine A2A receptor antagonist programme partnered with Biogen Idec. In cancer the emphasis is on targets that are capable of having pleiotropic effects on cancer cells i.e. single targets that can modulate the action of multiple growth promoting pathways used by cancer cells. With this approach it is hoped to produce effective treatments by preventing a tumour being able to survive by using a different complementary growth pathway. This pleiotropic approach to targets is illustrated by the Company’s Hsp90 programme partnered with Novartis.
Vernalis uses and develops structure-based drug discovery methods for its programmes in order to increase the quality and discovery rate of drug candidate compounds. The Company’s approach is to generate as much 3-dimensional protein-molecule structural information as possible in the hit identification phase using virtual screening, a distinctive fragment (small parts of molecules) based discovery process, and molecular modelling. In turn, this structural information is used to design novel hit compounds, often combining key interaction features from a number of fragments and compounds together. These hits are then optimised using structure-guided medicinal chemistry. Drug candidate compounds emerging from this discovery process in both therapeutic areas are regularly reviewed and considered for partnering or internal development.
