Synthetic Biodesign LLC is using a novel, natural products-based high throughput screening approach - licensed from and originally developed by University of Utah - to identify drug leads Natural products (NP) or their derivatives. Inthe past, Natural products and their derivatives have been the greatest source of our current pharmaceutics. But pharmaceutical companies have teneded to moved away from the use of natural products in their drug discovery programs, to devastating effect. The Synthetic Biodesign effort is to use a synthetic biology approach to produce libraries of millions of natural products suitable for HTS (high Throughput Screening). The effort of the firm is to combine a novel biosynthetic approach with a novel whole-animal high-throughput screen to demonstrate that natural products can be reintegrated into the drug discovery pipeline and this can be done using modern HT methodologies. With a particular focus on drugs for diseases where few (or no) therapeutic options exist, the effort is to restore this productive class of molecules to modern day drug discovery, yielding badly needed new therapeutics will be identified - particular interest on treatment of Cystic Fibrosis. The ability to screen in whole animals allow drug leads to be identified with good ADME-tox properties. Leads with poor ADME-tox properties are eliminated from the beginning withthe expectation that leads generated throughthis process are less likely to fail during development or during late-stage clinical testing.
