Date: Jul 27, 2011 Source: PR Newswire (
click here to go to the source)
SAN DIEGO, July 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Visionary Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced today that the company has raised seed round investments from a consortium of Angel Investors. The company is using the capital to develop novel small molecule retinoic acid related orphan receptor (ROR) modulators targeting TH17 T-lymphocytes for the treatment of various autoimmune disorders including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and COPD.
Visionary Pharmaceuticals has created BindingSIGHTs, a proprietary computational technology platform which encompasses an advanced suite of structural biology and chemical informatic tools. BindingSIGHTs enables sophisticated virtual screening and structure-based drug design for challenging molecular drug targets. Visionary Pharmaceuticals has also created the MANIFOLD virtual compound library of more than 22 million compounds, which have been screened against ROR BindingSIGHTs fingerprints. High-scoring drug-like hits have been docked to structural models of the ROR ligand binding site to yield focused compound sets. These compounds are synthesized and screened in cell-based assays providing novel highly ligand-efficient chemical matter to drive structure-based drug discovery.
Visionary Pharmaceuticals has created an innovative drug discovery engine utilizing novel proprietary technology to focus on nuclear hormone receptors. Nuclear hormone receptor modulators represent 15% of all drugs approved in the US and account for more than $27 billion in annual sales. "Our BindingSIGHTs technology and MANIFOLD library enables us to save both time and money in generating the best possible lead series. With the initial seed round investments we are now able to launch full-scale research activities in our state-of-the-art labs," said Gordon Alton, Ph.D., President and CEO of Visionary Pharmaceuticals. "We have assembled a veteran leadership team with proven expertise in driving novel therapies to IND. Additionally, our Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Board bring us a depth of industry experience in successfully driving high quality drug discovery and development programs and delivering high-value exits. Collectively this experience has resulted in more than a dozen novel drugs either marketed or in clinical trials."
About Visionary Pharmaceuticals
Visionary Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a privately held drug discovery company focused on new small molecule therapies in inflammation and cancer. Visionary Pharmaceuticals' computational BindingSIGHTs technology and MANIFOLD virtual compound library provides advanced structural biology capabilities to optimize the development of drug candidates. Visionary Pharmaceuticals is currently developing retinoic acid related orphan receptor (ROR) modulators targeting TH17 cells in a variety of diseases. To learn more about Visionary Pharmaceuticals, please visit www.visionarypharmaceuticals.com
