The FINANCIAL — Astellas Pharma Inc. announced that it has initiated a collaborative research with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology utilizing Astellas’ own protein-ligand complex structural information1) and AIST’s highly advanced IT drug-discovery technologies.
A candidate compound is a compound which has the potential to become a drug that plays a role by acting on proteins that cause diseases, according to Astellas.
Astellas has accumulated rich structural information of pharmaceutical target proteins complexed with candidate compounds, and the number of protein-ligand complex structures becomes approximately 10,000. Furthermore, the candidate compounds included in these complex structures have highly desirable attributes as a drug (drug-likeness2).
Meanwhile, AIST has technologies and calculation methods that enable the analysis of protein-ligand complex structures comprehensively, and also has state-of-the-art IT drug-discovery technologies analyzing structural fluctuations3) of a protein that contribute to the protein function.
This collaboration focuses on early discovery of compounds in the therapeutic areas of Ophthalmology and Nephrology not only by utilizing highly advanced IT drug-discovery technologies at AIST, but also by accumulating know-how of medicinal chemists, computational chemists and X-ray crystallographers at Astellas.
Astellas is actively pursuing open innovation in drug discovery through collaboration with external partners having strong expertise. Through this collaborative research, we expect the efficiency of candidate compound search will be significantly improved and the opportunity for drug discovery will be extended.
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