IBPR Core Technologies
An array of multi-disciplinary technologies covering major aspects of the drug discovery and development processes have been established in IBPR; including molecular biology, protein expression/engineering, automated high-throughput screening, medicinal chemistry, molecular modeling, animal pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, drug metabolism, pharmaceutical science, preclinical development as well as early phase clinical development and project management. These core technologies are briefly described as follows.
Overview of drug discovery and development processes
1. Biotechnology/Molecular Biology
- Identify and validate novel disease targets
- Develop in silico, in vitro, and in vivo screens for selection of drug candidates
- Generate IND-enabling preclinical safety data and competences
- Protein Expression and Engineering
– Expression and purification of recombinant proteins in bacteria, insect cells or mammalian cells
– Protein engineering on novel biologics/antibodies for therapeutic, diagnostic, or theranostic applications
2. Automated High Throughput Screening System (HTS)
- Provide assays for rapid detection by integrating the technologies behind automated operation platforms
- Provide service for in vitro testing of synthetic compounds
- Provide services for HTS database management, integration, analysis and compound inventory
- Provide service for cytotoxicity assay
3. Medicinal chemistry in drug discovery and early development
- Hit-to-lead and lead-to-candidate optimization by various techniques
- Structure-property Guided Design
- High Throughput Parallel Synthesis
- Structure-based Drug Design
- Computer-aided Drug Design
- Cheminformatics-based Drug Design
- Synthesize diverse structural analogues for in vitro biological evaluation
- Provide suitable quantity of potent compounds and reference standards for the assessments of in vivo efficacy, pharmacokinetics and acute toxicity
- Develop a feasible synthetic route for bulk production of potential drug candidates toward future development
4. Structure-biology and computational-based drug design and modeling
- Crystallize target proteins and solve the structures of its complex with the IBPR compounds to facilitate structure-based drug design
- Guide lead optimization procedures by computer-aided drug design, including molecular docking and de novo drug design
- Establish effective virtual screening strategies to discover novel drug hits and drug candidates
5. In vivo/Ex vivo pharmacology
- Establish relevant in vivo/ex vivo pharmacological models to evaluate biological activities of compounds with promising in vitro (cancer, diabetes, infectious diseases)
- Evaluate developability of lead compounds concerning toxicokinetics and safety pharmacology
- Identify drug leads and development candidates
6. Drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics (DMPK)
- Provide pharmacokinetic (PK), pharmacodynamic (PD), drug metabolism (DM), and toxicokinetic (TK) supports to identify drug leads
- Characterize drug disposition and elimination in animals for lead optimization and identification of preclinical development candidates
7. Pharmaceutical Science and Development (Early Phase)
- New molecule developability assessment platform
- Study physicochemical properties of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) following the official guidelines and search for optimal condition to increase the stability and solubility of API
- Choose a proper dosage form (oral, injection,… etc.) and formulation for toxicity studies and clinical trial
- Find suitable excipients
- Set a specification for API and drug product in the selected dosage form
8. Project Management Team for Drug Development
- Project management plays a prominent role in new drug development which is a lengthy, costly and complex process
- Implement effective project management, IBPR established a skilled Project Management Team (PMT)
- Responsible for project structure planning, time-line scheduling and monitoring project activities
- Communicate effectively with scientists, advisors, , funding agency and regulatory authorities on all aspects to ensure the development project is well monitored and progress as expected
New Technology Platforms/Capabilities
To enhance the overall research strength as well as long-term strategic development niches of IBPR, we continue recruiting new talents and invest in cutting edge R&D capabilities to delve into our drug discovery endeavors. New platforms being established include the followings.
- Phenotypic drug screening platform
- Structure-based and fragment-based drug design technology platform
- Computation and informatics technology platform
- Translational pharmacology technology platform, patient-derived xenograft (PDX) model
- Novel biologics
These platforms are not only complement to the existing capabilities but also bring forth new opportunities at IBPR.