Cyclica, a biotechnology company that commercialised Ligand Express, has launched its novel, first-in-class drug design technology, Ligand Design at the Collision Conference in Toronto, it was reported yesterday.

The platform is claimed to empower scientists in the pharmaceutical industry to generate novel drug-like compounds by integrating methods for molecule generation, ADMET prediction, and high-throughput ligand-protein interaction prediction.

Ligand Design concentrates on a drug's polypharmacology and explores synthetically accessible chemical space to de novo design small molecules against a collection of targets and anti-targets, while simultaneously choosing physicochemical and ADMET properties. The company say that it has the ability to transform research and discovery processes, and augment the capabilities of scientists to rapidly design drugs with greater precision and efficacy. The platform has been used by leading pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, and academia globally, and Cyclica sys that it is showing promising results in drug discovery. To date, several novel agents have been synthesised and tested successfully for activity in multiple disease areas.