Cresset Group Announces the Opening of 4th Design a Molecule Competition

Welwyn Garden City, UK (20th March 2012) Cresset, innovative provider of software and services for synthetic and computational chemists, and molecule designers is pleased to announce the opening of its fourth Design a Molecule Competition. The competition, open to scientists around the world, challenges entrants to design a molecule that is biologically similar to a reference compound, while being novel, synthetically tractable and drug-like. Entrants are given free licenses to the FieldAlign and FieldView software for the duration of the competition. They are judged based on the combination of a high FieldAlign score with low 2D similarity, and an expert assessment of the synthetic feasibility and drug-likeness of the molecule. The overall winner receives an iPad.

Like the previous competitions, the reference compound is an anti-malarial target, this time a broad spectrum protein target relevant to bacteria, pathogenic fungi and various plasmodium-like human parasites. Any intellectual property generated from the competition will be donated to a not-for-profit agency working on malaria. The last competition was won by Novartis scientist, Peter Ertl, whose design was very elegant and compact, with low conformational flexibility and high field and shape match, relative to the starting inhibitor.

Cresset CEO Dr Robert Scoffin commented, ‘we’re pleased with the response we’ve had to previous competitions and hope that we can contribute to the anti-malarial cause through this exciting target. The designs submitted for previous targets have generally been excellent, despite the tough challenges posed, and we look forward to seeing the results of our latest event.’

The competition runs from March 15th to April 20th 2012, and full details can be found on the company website. Winner(s) will be notified within 30 days of the competition closing.

For further information on the complete range of software and services available from Cresset, please visit www.cresset-group.com, follow Cresset on Twitter (@cressetgroup) or join its LinkedIn group.

About Cresset BioMolecular Discovery Ltd

Cresset develops software for calculating and comparing the molecular Field characteristics of chemical compounds. Field technology uses the surface properties of molecules to evaluate their activities and properties, rather than relying on 2D structure similarity, which enables Cresset’s users to find more interesting, novel and relevant results than other methods. Cresset’s Fields provide a smarter, structure independent way of hit-finding, lead switching and lead optimization in drug discovery and other chemistry-based research projects. Cresset’s service division have successfully applied Field technologies to a very wide range of target classes, with and without structural information, on over 100 projects for major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. www.cresset-group.com