Selcia concludes drug discovery pact with ExonHit

Under the pact, Selcia has used its proprietary CEfrag technique and has identified new and weak affinity hits from Selcia’s Fragment Library.

Selcia claims that its CEfrag technology uses capillary electrophoresis to detect weak binding interactions between a fragment and target protein.

Selcia managing director Hans Fliri said this further validates CEfrag’s ability to identify fragments as viable hits at the outset of a drug discovery project against difficult biological targets.

"We believe CEfrag, combined with Selcia’s Fragment Library with high QC criteria, represents a powerful new platform for the identification of new chemical starting points for lead development," Fliri said.

ExonHit Medicinal Chemistry director Eric Beausoleil said Selcia’s scientists were able to successfully identify novel, weak affinity hits from Selcia’s fragment library using their CEfrag screening technology.

"The new fragment hits were confirmed in our secondary assays, and are now undergoing further evaluation," Beausoleil said.