Neurocrine wins NIH grant for GPCR library design, synthesis, and evaluation.(G-protein coupled receptors)(Brief Article)

2002 OCT 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc., (NBIX) announced that the company has received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

This new grant totals more than $1.5M over a 2-year period to support the further development of a novel screening library of compounds targeted towards G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs).

Results obtained by Neurocrine scientists during phase-I NIH grant studies demonstrated that a 2000-member library of molecules designed specifically to interact with a subfamily of GPCRs produced a much higher success rate in high-throughput screening than did similarly sized random chemical libraries.

The new phase II NIH award will allow the design, synthesis, and evaluation of a larger GPCR-targeted library of small molecules and will facilitate the identification of therapeutic drug candidates. This library design technology extends the company's "multichannel" drug discovery technology to the development of high-throughput screening libraries.

"Traditional approaches to drug discovery start with the screening of ...