TORONTO, ON, CANADA (August 14, 2019) – Cyclica Inc. is pleased to announce the second year of Ligand Express Academic Polypharmacology (LEAP) Program under the Cyclica Academic Partnership Program (CAPP).
For its second consecutive year, the LEAP program will invite selected academic partners to access Cyclica’s flagship proteome screening platform, Ligand Express®, which has been newly updated with a deep learning predictive engine, MatchMaker and augmented by Cyclica’s ADMET prediction technology, POEM. Researchers can submit up to three small molecules to rapidly uncover unique polypharmacology profiles and ADMET property predictions through www.ligandexpress.com. The application to the LEAP program is now open to researchers internationally and will close on September 30, 2019. More information about LEAP can be found here.
Professor Angus McQuibban from the University of Toronto, one of the eight finalists from the inaugural LEAP program in 2018, comments on LEAP, “We are using Cyclica’s computational tools to understand the mechanism of action of small molecules identified in our lab. Ligand Express has greatly reduced the time and cost to hypothesis and experimental testing. Based on promising findings, we are now extending our collaboration to advance therapeutics in Parkinson’s disease funded by a prestigious Genome Canada grant.”
In addition to LEAP, on August 1, 2019, Cyclica announced the Design Advanced Novel Chemical Entities (DANCE) program. Together, DANCE and LEAP provide selected academic partners with two complementary platforms for target deconvolution and drug design respectively, and together will enable the design of advanced lead-like molecules while providing insights into polypharmacology.
“We have seen continued success and increased engagement coming out of our first LEAP program and will continue to broaden our collaborations with researchers globally. Now with both LEAP and DANCE under CAPP, we will promote the intimate integration between the academic community and industry to drive new drug discovery for unmet therapeutic needs.” – Naheed Kurji, President & CEO Cyclica.
About Cyclica
Cyclica is a Toronto-based, globally recognized biotechnology company that leverages AI and computational biophysics to reshape drug discovery. Cyclica provides the pharmaceutical industry with Ligand Express and Ligand Design, an integrated, holistic, and end-to-end enabling platform focused on polypharmacology. Ligand Design and Ligand Express augment how scientists design advanced lead like molecules that minimize off-target effects, and gain insights into structural pharmacogenomics. By doing more with artificial intelligence, Cyclica aims to revolutionize a system troubled with attrition and costly failures, accelerate the drug discovery process, and develop medicines with greater precision.