Historically, pharmaceutical hits and leads have been discovered by screening compounds against a relatively small number (50 to 200) of cell-based or animal-based assays, in which the molecular target of the compound is not always known.  Compounds are often selected for further development and clinical testing based on a positive biological response with little or no knowledge of the biological target itself or how the drug compound produces its biological effect (mechanism of action). Without understanding mechanism of action, the likelihood of a drug compound’s clinical and regulatory success can significantly decrease. 

At Serenex, rather than profile compounds against tens of targets, we profile compounds against thousands of targets and we then proceed to rapidly identify those targets using proprietary bioinformatics tools and high accuracy mass spectrometry (high-throughput Applied Biosystems MALDI-TOF-TOF and Q-TOF). In so doing, we greatly increase the probability of finding both therapeutic and toxicity targets early in the drug discovery process and in determining a drug compound’s mechanism of action. This not only increases the likelihood of clinical and regulatory success for a particular drug compound but it also reduces the cost of failure by reducing the likelihood of fundamentally flawed compounds from entering expensive clinical trials.