A new, more effective method for drug discovery screening

The Problem

For every 5 to 10,000 compounds created, maybe one makes it to market after many years of testing and multi-millions of dollars invested. The current screening process to assess a compound to move it to the preclinical stage takes as long as three years and cannot accurately predict how the human body will respond, either for the quality of a potential cure or for the potential side effects.

Stages-of-the-drug-development-process-This-chart-represents-the-attrition-rate-of

The Zenagem Probe

The Zenagem Probe is a patented process based on proteomics that combines multiple disciplines including biomedicine, biochemistry, chemistry, computer science and engineering.

This process provides a less costly, more accurate and faster approach to compound screening. Using the Zenagem Probe also predicts a compounds quality percentage of its cure capabilities as well as predicting the potential side effects before the compound enters the preclinical stage.

Dan Nomura is a Professor of Chemical Biology in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF. Since 2017, he has also been the Director of the Novartis-Berkeley Center for Proteomics and Chemistry Technologies focused on using chemoproteomic platforms to tackle the undruggable proteome. He is also Co-Founder and Head of the Scientific Advisory Board of Frontier Medicines. He earned his B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology and Ph.D. in Molecular Toxicology at UC Berkeley with Professor John Casida and was a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Research with Professor Ben Cravatt before returning to Berkeley as a faculty member in 2011. Among his honors are selection as a Searle Scholar, American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, the Department of Defense Breakthroughs Award, Eicosanoid Research Foundation Young Investigator Award, and the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research ASPIRE award.X

Assistant Professor Megan Matthews holds an appointment in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Matthews received a B.A. degree from Miami University in 2005. She earned her Ph.D. degree in 2011 at Penn State under the guidance of J. Martin Bollinger, Jr. and Carsten Krebs and was supported by a Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship for postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Benjamin F. Cravatt at Scripps Research. She joined the UPenn faculty in the summer of 2017. Matthews studies the chemistry of enzyme cofactors and post-translational modifications that play fundamental roles in physiology and disease. She uses activity-based probes and cutting-edge mass spectrometry to identify new cofactors, image enzymes inside cells and tissues, and develop pharmacological tools to advance new targets.

Professor Bollinger holds appointments in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at The Pennsylvania State University. Bollinger received a B.S. degree cum laude from Penn State in 1986. He earned his Ph.D. degree in 1993 at M. I. T. under the guidance of Professor JoAnne Stubbe and was supported by an NIH Fellowship for postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Christopher T. Walsh at Harvard Medical School. He joined the Penn State faculty in 1995 – initially in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology – and was appointed to the Chemistry faculty in 2004. Bollinger studies biochemical pathways and reaction mechanisms involving activation of dioxygen and its partially reduced forms at transition metal cofactor. He has presided over assembly of one of the top metallobiochemistry groups in the world at Penn State. He was a Searle Scholar and received a Dreyfus New Faculty Award, the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry’s Early Career Award, and Penn State’s Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Physical Sciences. X

Peter Weigand is a serial entrepreneur having launched over 20 companies. He has been the CEO of six of the startups and acted as Chair of the others by recruiting or funding those management teams. His companies have been named three different times to the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies list. He has taken one of his companies public and bought or sold an additional 15 plus companies to pair with the startups or exit to strategic buyers.

He has direct relationships with several hundred business leaders, investors and bankers, both domestically and internationally. Peter has spoken globally at many forums from small leadership venues to conventions with over twenty thousand attendees. He has served on eight public company boards of directors, two think tanks and founded his alma mater’s entrepreneurship center, which today is ranked in the U.S. Top 100.

Peter has been honored with numerous awards including Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young, 10 Best CEO’s of 2019 by Industry Era magazine, 2020 Global Excellence Award by BE, Ltd and 2017 Corporate Global Vision Excellence Award by CV magazine. X