PARTNERSHIPS

The pharmaceutical industry has large collections of proprietary small-molecule compounds, produced over many years, often as the result of searches for new compounds in highly focused disease areas. These compounds may not have been reviewed against other disease areas, so broader utility remains unknown.  Also, many disease areas have targets of interest, but which are considered to be “poorly drugable” or intractable to current drug discovery approaches. 

QUEST provides a new approach for the pharmaceutical industry to widen its review of its compound libraries, potentially uncovering “hidden assets” of active compounds not previously recognised.  QUEST also enables the search for small-molecule compounds which may be active against the so called “poorly drugable” targets. 

Importantly, QUEST can also be used to screen already marketed compounds for activity against previously unrecognized diseases.  This has important commercial benefits in that broadening the indication of usage of an already marketed compound may be achieved in a much shorter time frame (without the need for extensive and time consuming toxicology and clinical trials) so both shortening the time in getting the treatment to patients, as well as potentially strengthening the patent position.