Abstract

The Impact Of Chemical Probes On Academic Drug Discovery

Susanne Muller Knapp, Group Head Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), University Of Oxford

The SGC (Structural Genomics Consortium) is an academic charity with laboratories in Oxford (UK), Toronto (Canada), North Carolina US) Campinas (Brazil) and Frankfurt (Germany). The consortium encompasses a large public-private partnership involving currently eight pharmaceutical companies. Although kinases are well established drug targets, the majority of kinases are still underexplored and lack specific inhibitors to explore their biology and therapeutic potential. Moreover, no well-defined set of kinase inhibitors is available for use in chemogenomics experiments. The SGC has started programs to address both issues. The kinase chemical probe program aims to develop specific kinase inhibitors for the ‘untargeted kinome’. Complementing this effort a comprehensive chemogenomic set of 1000 compounds will be assembled to define the function of all protein kinases in cells. A new probe program initiated by the SGC associated pharma partners will be presented as well.