Sue,
Just wanted to reply piecemeal to your post contrasting the virtues of PCOP and ARQL, as I felt a little expansion upon the ARQL methodology was in order.
>Arqule is quite adept at robotic synthesis, simply the
>synthesis of chemical compounds using robots.
Much more than that.ÿ ARQL has system which allows for integration of
SBDD and CC, as well as bioinformatics.ÿ Its also much more ammendable to optimization without synthesizing 1 million compounds. I would be curious as to how PCOP compares in its integration of these various platforms which I believe underlies the true strength of ARQL. ÿ
>Robotic synthesis is certainly more efficient than traditional
>synthesis methods, but less efficient than pool and split
>synthesis, and is not proprietary or unique.
Chemistry in general is not proprietary per se.ÿIt takes the talents and imagination of the chemists to make things work.ÿFor example, Merck doesn't have patents on chemistry, they have great chemists. ARQL has proven again and again through their new and expanding partnerships that they have a powerful method of producing drug like compounds.ÿ If it was easy as buying a few machines, the big pharmas wouldnt even need these guys yet they're practically banging down their doors.
>Pharmacopeia's ECLiPS technology, however, is patented
>and allows for the rapid synthesis of large numbers of
>compounds. For comparison sake, Pharmacopeia is currently
>making approximately 1 million compounds per year. By
>contrast, a typical robotic synthesis company makes
>between 150,000 and 200,000 compounds per year. And in
>drug discovery, numbers are the name of the game!
I politely disagree, as I think this ignores the importance of diversity and optimization. PCOP is a good company but just because they can make 5X the compounds doesnt necessarily mean that they will produce more drugs. It depends more on how many types of scaffolds can be produced and how much functionality can be varied on each scaffold.ÿ Solution phase is ammendable to more types of reactions (although lots of progress in solid phase).ÿ Plus, if you can synthesize 3 libraries based upon a certain scaffold, each one an optimization of the previous, then synthesizing 1 million compounds is not necessary.ÿ In other words you can "distill" out the right compound without synthesizing a zillion compounds. In short, drug discovery is far more than a simple game of sheer numbers.
Jim |
