WuXi AppTec HitS today announced that it has entered into a research collaboration with DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) group of ETH Zürich, headed by Dr. Jörg Scheuermann. As an institution of the Swiss Confederation, ETH Zürich has co-pioneered DEL technology and dedicated to further develop and broaden its applicability for modern drug discovery since 2002.
The collaboration features new screening approaches for difficult targets and aims at further advancing DEL technology. In this collaboration, ETH Zürich helps academic users and industrial customers in screening freely accessible DELopen libraries and commercially available DELight libraries, respectively, constructed by WuXi AppTec HitS.
This service aims at providing ETH Zürich’s DEL screening expertise to DEL-inexperienced customers who wish to identify novel ligands for their targets from WuXi AppTec’s DEL compounds (DELs), while post-selection processing and data analysis are provided by WuXi AppTec HitS.
DELopen is an advanced way to get into DEL-based ligand discovery for academic groups with no previous experience with DELs.
It’s an established, simple and very user-friendly setup, requiring no specialized equipment, while providing a wide range of structurally diverse DELs with a quite high count of structures to be screened simultaneously. From an experimental view, the DELopen kit provides a nice and detailed, easy to follow protocol, available also as a video tutorial on the DELopen website (https://discoverybiology.wuxiapptec.com/resources), as well as a helpful support team. The generation of DELs, Quality Control (QC) and the preparation of final DNA primers for analysis are handled by WuXi AppTec HitS.
Results and Quality assessment of the screening are provided in an easy to understand report, which details a nice overview over the different selection conditions and the top performing DEL libraries, together with a recommendation of hit compounds to follow up.
About DELopen
DELopen is a platform initiated by WuXi AppTec and academia/institutions dedicated to the development and application of DEL Technology. At DELopen, we are developing robust and advanced DEL-derived tools, methods and community-building that establish and support multi-disciplinary research of life science and drug discovery. At DELopen, we provide free access of DEL libraries owned by participating partners to academic users in drug discovery as a pioneer. At DELopen, we strengthen opportunities for close collaboration between industry and academia. Please visit: https://delopen.org/
About WuXi AppTec HitS
WuXi AppTec HitS unit provides one-stop Target-to-Hit services that enable companies in the pharmaceuticals, biotech and academics worldwide to seek premium drug discovery. As an innovation-driven and customer-focused unit, WuXi AppTec HitS helps our partners improve the productivity of advancing hit discovery through high-quality and cost-effective solutions. With industry-leading capabilities in protein science, antibody science, DNA-encoded library technology, biophysics and structure-based drug design, WuXi AppTec HitS is committed to driving toward the realization of the vision that every drug can be made and every disease can be treated. Please visit: https://discoverybiology.wuxiapptec.com
About ETH Zürich
Established in 1855 as the Federal Polytechnic School, ETH Zürich is an institution of the Swiss Confederation dedicated to higher learning and research and a national center for education with international appeal, attracting talent from all over the world. Together with EPFL and four research institutes, it forms the federally directed, and to a major degree financed, ETH domain. The successful combination of a cosmopolitan outlook with national roots made the young educational institution one of the driving forces behind industrialization in Switzerland: it brought the necessary expertise into the country, trained technical specialists and helped set up groundbreaking national infrastructures. Please visit: https://del-technology.ethz.ch