3-DPL™ MAP PATENT ISSUED BY USPTO

Patent designed to protect ChemNavigator's novel virtual screening technology

ChemNavigator, Inc. today announced that it has received patent protection from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its application entitled "Methods for Identifying a Molecule That May Bind to a Target Molecule." This patent will cover methods of use of the company's unique 3-D Protein Ligand (3-DPL) Map Virtual Screening technology for drug discovery.

Virtual screening refers to the use of computer based simulation for the testing of new potential drug molecules against pharmaceutical drug targets. Virtual screening for new drug leads allows pharmaceutical research organizations to avoid the time requirements and expense of traditional biological screening where hundreds of thousands of randomly selected compounds are tested as potential drug leads. Over 99% of the compounds tested in traditional biological screening are found to be inactive costing companies millions of dollars in testing costs and time spent. Virtual screening allows for the selection of a small set of hundreds to thousands of compounds that are much more likely to show favorable biological activity.

ChemNavigator's patented 3-DPL Map virtual screening technology provides a more comprehensive solution to virtual screening than other systems because each potential drug molecule is compared to the entire protein surface in search of favorable binding interactions. Other systems focus on only 2 or 3 predefined binding zones. In addition, the speed of 3-DPL Map allows millions of potential drug molecules to be compared to the protein target in a short period of time, where other technologies are limited to considering many fewer potential molecules due to computing time constraints. As a result, we believe 3-DPL Map will identify potential drug molecules overlooked by other virtual screening systems.

"3-DPL Map virtual screening technology combines with our unique iResearch Library of over 15 million drug-like compound samples to form a comprehensive virtual screening solution for our research partners," said Scott Hutton, president and chief executive officer of ChemNavigator. "Once samples are identified by 3-DPL Map, our Chemistry Procurement Service allows us to procure and deliver a target-focused library of drug-like compounds to our research partners at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional solutions for lead compound discovery."

About ChemNavigator ChemNavigator is a privately held pharmaceutical research company focused on drug discovery using our proprietary proteomics and cheminformatics technologies, called 3-DPL™ Map and ChemMatrix™. Our competitive advantage is our unique ability to identify and analyze, with unmatched speed, the biochemical relationships that exist between a potential drug compound and its entire drug target molecule. Our 3-DPL Map technology is designed to allow more efficient and cost effective drug discovery by providing the ability to screen tens of millions of potential drugs in silico in order to rapidly identify compounds with a high likelihood of showing favorable activity. Our ChemMatrix technology is employed within products and services used by over 40 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

For more information contact:
Scott Hutton, President & CEO
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