New Workflow Solution Inspires Discovery Scientists in Search for New Ideas

ST. LOUIS–Tripos™, a leading provider of drug discovery informatics products and services, today announced the release of Muse™, a new molecular design program that enables discovery scientists in various fields to accelerate the identification and optimization of lead candidates. Using Muse, CADD scientists and medicinal chemists can invent novel structures, scaffolds, or side-chains that meet specific design objectives.

According to Patrick Flanagan, Tripos Chief Operating Officer, “Muse was developed to help scientists constantly move forward in their discovery processes, by rapidly eliminating traditional barriers to identifying and optimizing lead candidates. Muse is the first of many solutions being released on Tripos’ highly flexible, adaptable and extensible Pantheon™ platform.”

Successful drug design candidates can be considered and reviewed in the context of a significant number of parameters and variables, such as potency at the target, selectivity, good ADME properties, toxicity, and many more. Muse empowers discovery scientists to integrate additional computed properties and use them to optimize design ideas.

According to Tripos’ Muse Product Manager and Senior Scientist Brian Masek, Ph.D., “Muse is a molecular design program that allows you to address all of organic chemistry to get more ideas. Muse can help you generate ideas that optimize shape and pharmacophoric similarity to a set of lead structures, or you can use literally any in-house or third-party scoring function you have available – like blood brain barrier, ADME, toxicity, docking, etc., to guide design and allow you to generate ideas that meet multiple design criteria.”

Muse can be applied to lead hop to clear patent space, scaffold hop to new chemistry, or invent new R-groups around a fixed scaffold to optimize physicochemical properties. Muse currently operates on Windows XP and Vista (32 bit). Muse was part of a collaboration agreement with AstraZeneca in October 2008, to develop a new drug discovery workflow solution that centered on managing multiple parameters when defining the characteristics of a successful lead or drug candidate. That collaboration is ongoing.

About Tripos

Tripos, a Certara™ Company, is a global leader in innovative scientific solutions enabling life science researchers to improve the efficiency of molecular discovery. Established in 1979, Tripos was the first company to bring scientific computational drug discovery capabilities to the pharmaceutical, chemical and food design industries, and today helps a broad range of companies and research facilities accelerate the identification and optimization of new compounds that have the potential to become marketed drugs, foods, flavorings and fragrances. Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, Tripos serves more than 1,000 customers spanning over 46 countries.

About Certara

Certara is dedicated to improving human health through a broad spectrum of products and services, from molecular discovery to clinical research. Formed in 2008, Certara unites Tripos and Pharsight Corporation. Tripos is a global leader in innovative scientific solutions enabling life science researchers to improve the efficiency of molecular discovery. Pharsight is the leading provider of software and scientific services to improve productivity and decision-making in clinical drug development. Certara expects to provide its clients with important new products, key enabling technologies and scientific expertise to expedite the flow of information throughout drug discovery and development. Certara is focused on reducing the barriers between the phases of research that will speed discoveries in chemistry and enable pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to achieve significant and enduring improvements in the development and use of therapeutic products.