Biospace.com published a fine combichem article. I picked this up off of a Yahoo post. Here's the URL:
biospace.com
I've extracted ARQL's Stephen Hill's comments. They are very illuminating. ARQL and Hill have been very quiet. This is the first open interview I've seen.
Dr. Steven Hill, who joined ArQule from F. Hoffmann-La Roche in January, is
still considering a strategy for taking his company forward. But he is among the
crowd that believes combichem companies can benefit by meaningfully
integrating more capabilities into their core businesses.
"It is not my intent to convert ArQule to a fully-integrated drug discovery
company," he stresses. "We're not going to get involved in basic biological
research. It is not my goal that ArQule take projects from target through to IND.
"But increasingly," he adds, "we will do more of the drug discovery process
within ArQule so that we get a greater share of the benefits there." Areas of
interest he noted are screening and pharmacology. Hill says he is open to building
new capabilities by internal expansion or acquisition.
"If you believe purely in screening as a means of discovery, then libraries are a
commodity service," says ArQule CEO Dr. Steven Hill. Hill's point is that anyone who wants to view combinatorial chemistry as a
commodity can choose to do so--it just depends on your discovery strategy. If
you are relying on brute force screening of as many compounds as possible to
find leads, then one library is likely to be as good as the next. You'll probably be
attracted by the size of a library, or by price per compound.
But that's not how discovery should work, he says. "The more intelligence you
can build in to your libraries, the more efficiency you can bring to the drug
discovery process." No chemical library, no matter how large, can hope to
capture even a tiny fraction of the chemical diversity possible among small
molecules (see Just What is Combinatorial Chemistry?). And in fact, companies
don't simply makes small molecules at random--all follow certain rules about
what kind of chemicals are likely to be good drugs. As Hill notes, "there's no
point in making a library of compounds you know won't be bioavailable, or that
are likely to be toxic." But beyond these general rules, many combinatorial
chemistry companies believe they can increase their chances of success by
gaining specialized knowledge of certain target classes or using other strategies.
"By capturing appropriate data and storing it in a sensible way, you can identify
the causes of failure. That way you increase the intelligence of your library over
time," says Hill. "If know causes of failure better, and which of those correlate to
structure, you can use that knowledge to design future libraries." ArQule's
dedication to this pursuit, Hill believes, coupled with technologies to accelerate
optimization, leaves the company a sustainable role--even if they are augmenting
customers' internal efforts. "This will not all be done by pharma companies
themselves. And big pharma doesn't have a stranglehold on all discovery
programs--they will not provide all the medicines of the future."
Hill also adds, "If you believe combinatorial chemistry is a commodity, then you
just need bigger libraries."
Indeed, many big pharma companies are less willing to pay royalties for
discovery services than they once were. Hill allows that ArQule's future deals
will likely involve more upfront fees and fewer royalties. "Pharmaceutical
companies are much more reluctant now to pay royalties," he says. "I don't mind
whether we take the value upfront or downstream, as long as we get same net
present value." |
