Targacept Inc has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) through its Advanced Technology Program (ATP). The grant will provide approximately $2.0 million over a three-year period.

The award will help fund Targacept's development of sophisticated new computer simulation software designed to accurately predict biological and toxicological effects of drugs, which would enable earlier and better predictions about the molecular properties of drug candidates, improve selection of compounds for development and reduce the failure rate in the drug development process.

"This award, our second federal grant this year, highlights the depth and breadth of our drug discovery capabilities," noted Targacept's Vice President of Drug Discovery and Development, William S. Caldwell. He continued: "It is especially important, in terms of validating Targacept's core capabilities, that we won the award as a first-time applicant to ATP."

Targacept's Scientific Director of Molecular Design, Jeffrey D. Schmitt, will serve as the principal investigator for the project, a three-year research effort. His collaborators will be Roberto Car of the Princeton Materials Institute at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) and Todd Minehart of Department of Chemistry at the University of Colorado (Denver, CO).

"Our research will leverage ab initio (from the beginning) Molecular Dynamics (aiMD) concepts, which have revolutionized electronic structure simulation and led to previously inaccessible insights, to facilitate more efficient drug discovery and development," stated Schmitt.