Ubiquigent Limited, a company specialising in providing ubiquitin cell-signalling system drug discovery services and research tools, has launched the first commercially available compound library comprising novel small molecules designed to target deubiquitylase (DUB) enzymes, DUBtarget-001.

To mark the launch of the library Dr John Harris (Ubiquigent Scientific Advisory Board member) presented DUBtarget-001 at the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) conference – Innovation in design, supply and acquisition for compound screening libraries.

Ubiquigent, in collaboration with the Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) at the University of Dundee, have jointly developed the library to support both commercial and academic researchers looking to either enter the ubiquitin drug discovery field or to support those with active programmes but who are seeking access to additional chemical diversity.

The design of DUBtarget-001 (led by Dr Andrew Woodland of the DDU) has been informed by DUB structural data to yield a library with the potential to have activity across multiple DUB families. Ubiquigent has already screened the library against USP2 (a DUB with potential roles in oncology) and demonstrated a significant number of hits from different structural classes. These structures represent multiple starting points with the potential to lead to the development of novel therapeutic and tool compounds.

The library is now available in either its physical form for screening within researchers’ own laboratories or as a dataset where the library will be screened against any of the 40 other DUB enzymes included within Ubiquigent’s DUBprofiler screening platform.

Ubiquigent’s Executive Chairman, Dr Mark Treherne commented, “DUB-targeted libraries are the keys that can unlock the multiple therapeutic opportunities that are emerging for the exploitation of novel DUB inhibitors. DUBtarget-001 is the first of a pipeline of innovative libraries that will link ubiquitin research to new drug discovery opportunities for oncology, neurodegeneration and many other chronic diseases with significant unmet medical need.”

Dr John Harris noted, “As has become clear in the kinase inhibitor field, the application of libraries that have been custom-designed with the structure and mechanism of the drug target(s) in mind is expected to be a substantially more effective route to innovative and potent starting-points for DUB candidate drugs than target-agnostic screening approaches.”