Locus Pharmaceuticals Inc., a computationally-based drug design and development company, has entered into a research agreement with Eli Lilly and Company, whereby Locus will apply its proprietary computational technologies to design small molecule compounds having activity against a protein kinase target identified by Lilly. Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

"We are very pleased to be working with Lilly, which we view as a major additional validation of our 'virtual' fragment design approach and our expanding core competence in kinases," said Jeffrey S. Wiseman, vice president, technology and informatics, at Locus.

"Having successfully applied our computational approach to internal kinase programs which have reached the IND lead stage, we are confident that our proprietary algorithms will allow us to design novel chemical classes of kinase inhibitors with predictably high potency and selectivity for Lilly," added Wiseman.

According to the company release, protein kinases function as control switches for many biochemical pathways inside cells. Kinase activities can become dysregulated by numerous molecular and signalling events, thus contributing to both the onset and progression of diseases. These proteins are of particular interest as targets for the development of novel therapeutics, but because there are more than 500 structurally related kinases, a drug often requires high selectivity for the intended target, a design capability where Locus has demonstrated expertise.

Locus' core technology is fragment-based, computational drug design which Locus has combined with highly integrated medicinal chemistry and biology capabilities.

Starting with a protein crystal structure, an in silico collection of 40,000 molecular fragments and one of the world's largest privately-owned Linux-based supercomputer clusters, Locus identifies optimum ligand binding sites on protein targets and computes the binding affinity of molecular fragments to these sites. The fragments are then assembled computationally into drug candidates with accurately predicted binding potency.

Locus Pharmaceuticals Inc. is one of the leading organisations in computational drug design. These proprietary computational approaches are combined with in-house expertise in chemistry, biology and crystallography to create a fully integrated drug discovery and development platform.