Dose Number as a Tool to Guide Lead Optimization of Orally Bioavailable Compounds
Flash Talk with Guests, Abdellatif ElMarrouni, Ph.D. and Peter Wuelfing, Ph.D.
Hosted by Drug Hunter's Director of Industry Research & Relations Dennis Koester, Ph.D.
October 10, 2024 at 8 AM PDT / 11 AM EDT / 5PM CEST
Small molecule developability challenges have been well documented over the last two decades. One of these critical developability parameters is aqueous solubility. In general, more soluble compounds have improved oral absorption. While enabling formulation technologies exist to improve bioperformance for low solubility compounds, these are often more complex, expensive, and challenging to scale up.
In this Flask Talk, Peter Wuelfing and Abdellatif ElMarrouni will present a tool to avoid these development issues. Medicinal chemists need tools to rapidly profile and improve the physicochemical properties of molecules during discovery. Dose number (Do) is a simplified metric to predict whether a compound will be reasonably absorbed based on solubility at an expected clinical dose and represents a valuable parameter to the medicinal chemist defining a clinical candidate.
Peter and Abdellatif will present the background of the Do equation and how it can be effectively used to rapidly predict oral absorption potential for molecules in the discovery space.
Peter currently serves as Executive Director in the Pharmaceutical Sciences organization at Merck & Co., Inc. (West Point, PA) and leads a team responsible for compound developability profiling, preclinical and toxicology formulation development and initial FIH formulation strategies for small molecules and biologics. Peter has more than 20 years of experience in manufacturing, analytical, preformulation and drug delivery roles. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 manuscripts and more than 50 conference podium or poster presentations. He is a member of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, American Chemical Society and is a Board Member of the Internal Consortium For Innovation and Quality in Pharmaceutical Development.
Abdellatif is currently a Principal Scientist in Discovery Chemistry at Merck & Co., Inc. (West Point, PA). He is working on therapies for infectious diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. Abdellatif is also co-leading the West Point efforts on implementing medicinal chemistry design strategies using in silico methods. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Girona, Spain. His postdoctoral research in the lab of Prof. K. C. Nicolaou focused on the total synthesis of complex bioactive natural products. He is a member of the Medicinal Chemistry division of the American Chemical Society.
Join us to learn more about how you can optimize oral bioavailability on your project using the dose number tool.