How to evaluate StarDrop: A step-by-step guide
Learn how to evaluate StarDrop with this step-by-step guide from Optibrium. Discover key features, trial objectives, and how to set up a successful evaluation of this powerful drug discovery platform
adMare Bioinnovations is a is a pan-Canadian organisation enabling progress in the Canadian life science industry. They support the development of new start-up companies, partnering with academics to drive ideas forward by providing scientific and commercial expertise, specialized R&D infrastructure, and seed capital.
Medicinal chemist Sébastien Alazet had been using StarDrop in his previous company, and saw the impact it could have for the organisation. We met with him to discuss how his team uses StarDrop.
What challenges do your team face?
SA: My team is involved in medicinal chemistry projects at various stages from lead identification all the way to clinical candidate selection. It’s my job to extract as much data as possible around our compounds; both on performance against our targets, and their ADME and physicochemical properties.
Each different project comes with its own complexities and tasks, but a consistent challenge I’m faced with is data analysis. Are there trends within my chemical series? Are there selectivity issues?
How do you use StarDrop?
SA: We use StarDrop for such data analyses, to get a better understanding of the relevant structure-activity relationships (SAR). It’s super quick – I can have a view on my SAR within five minutes, to inform future design strategies.
I think StarDrop is a fantastic tool to have as a medicinal chemist, whether you do early-stage medicinal chemistry or deal with a huge amount of data.
One part of my work involves analysing patents. When I extract data from a patent, it can often involve examining hundreds of molecules, from which I then need to pinpoint a starting point. I can use StarDrop’s clustering tool, similarity analyses and chemical space plots to quick identify, ‘ah, this is the direction that they went’. I can identify the chemical starting point and easily visualise in Card View® how this compound has been tuned for potency or ADME properties. And I can do all this really quickly, winning back time across my projects.
StarDrop also helps us to quickly identify trends within chemical series. My team are often plotting pIC50 values and harnessing StarDrop’s range of data visualisation techniques. We use StarDrop’s ADME QSAR module to predict key properties such as logP and logD. The library enumeration features are useful for preparing for docking studies, and I also use the eSim3D module to screen large-scale virtual libraries.
Aside from the range of features, why do you like StarDrop?
SA: The science behind StarDrop seems extremely solid. I met with Optibrium’s previous Director of Computational Chemistry, Peter Hunt, who was able to explain the foundations of the models to me very clearly. And I have to say the support team have been excellent. Whenever I have a question, I don’t like to
wait.
But the Optibrium team are both fast and helpful, providing useful detailed answers
I also like the website content; there are loads of useful videos, and regular training sessions to sign up to.
Want to learn more?
For further information about how adMare Bioinnovations use their scientific and commercial expertise to support Canadian industry, visit admarebio.com.
Interested in trying StarDrop?
Get in touch with the team to discuss your specific projects and needs, and book a software demo.
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