Optibrium™, a developer of software for small molecule drug discovery and optimisation, today announced it will make its StarDrop^TM technology available to an international consortium of academic and not-for profit organisations.

Under the agreement, licensed access to StarDrop software will be provided to support drug discovery projects as part of a global health programme focused on developing new treatments for neglected diseases.

Consortium partners are involved in projects to facilitate and speed up the development of therapies for the treatment of so-called “neglected” diseases such as leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness, Chagas disease, malaria, tuberculosis and paediatric HIV. StarDrop’s unique optimisation and compound selection capabilities will help researchers to efficiently focus their efforts on researching candidate drugs with the best chance of success in becoming effective therapies in the treatment and prevention of these diseases.

Dr Matthew Segall, Optibrium’s CEO, commented, “We are very proud to support such an important effort to address some of the world’s biggest health issues. Drug development is enormously time consuming, expensive and high risk, due to the challenge of finding high quality candidate drugs with the right balance of efficacy and safety. By adopting StarDrop, consortium partners will have global access to a wide range of tools allowing their researchers to quickly target compounds with the highest chance of success and avoid missed opportunities.”

Neglected diseases continue to cause significant morbidity and mortality in the developing world. Of 850 new therapeutic products approved between 2000 and 2011, only 4% (and only 1% of all approved NCEs) were indicated for neglected diseases, even though these diseases account for 11% of the global disease burden ^[1].

Partner organisations included in the agreement are: Anacor, Broad Institute, Epichem, Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), Sandexis, TB Alliance, UNICAMP, University of California San Diego, University of Cape Town, University of Dundee and University of Liverpool.

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