At Qubit Pharmaceuticals, we have been delighted to partner with Syngene Integrated Drug Discovery (IDD) team on a hit to lead project aiming at developing new anti-cancer therapy.

Thanks to Syngene integrated approach we have worked in a fully collaborative and project driven way to (i) implement an appropriate flow chart for hit characterization and optimization (ii) deliver optimized hits from different chemical series. Assay development for the target of interest was very challenging and we have benefited from the high scientific expertise and proactivity of Syngene biology team to identify the most relevant assays (biochemical, biophysical and cellular). The quality of the chemistry team has been outstanding as well in term of productivity and problem solving as in terms of structure-activity-relationship (SAR) analysis and new designs proposals which were filtered using Qubit unique technology to prioritize the next compound to synthesize. We have also greatly appreciated the high flexibility of the team when we had to change priorities, which is not always the case when we use pure fee for service offers. The great advantage of the IDD format is that we have been able to work as a true project team with very good and seamless communication combined with very efficient coordination to accelerate significantly the project progression. Finally, this first phase of the collaboration has been very successful with the identification of 4 different chemical series with low nanomolar activity and preliminary ADMET data which will be used to implement the next lead optimization step. 

We are looking forward to starting the second phase of this project with Syngene IDD team and delivering optimized leads in the coming months.  

Dr. Robert Marino

CEO, Qubit Pharmaceuticals