Abstract

Despite
the increasing spend in drug discovery and the progress made on understanding
the development and progression of debilitating diseases, the number of drug
targets addressed with small molecules lags far behind. PhoreMost aims to
remove these barriers to new drug development with its novel SITESEEKER®
technology: a live cell, proteome-wide, phenotypic assay system that can
rapidly identify unexpected druggable sites in specific disease-driving targets
that can’t be readily seen using conventional non-cell based analytical or
genetic methods.

This
technology uses Protein Interference (PROTEINi®) to identify cryptic sites
across all human proteins. It differs fundamentally from other genome- or
transcriptome-based target screening technologies such as CRISPR and RNAi by
expressing a diverse and highly complex library of small 3-dimensional protein-fragment
shapes in cells, one such peptide per cell, which interact with intracellular
proteins to describe new druggable sites. This approach operates directly at
the protein level, so that new druggable space can be defined as an inherent
part of the target-function screening process.

PhoreMost
is currently advancing novel drug discovery programmes in different areas of
disease including cancer, immuno-oncology, ageing and neurodegeneration. Following
a partnership model in collaboration with academia and industry, PhoreMost is
building up an alternative ethical drug discovery model that brings a
systematic pipeline of first-in-class drugs to market.