Drug design as never conceived before
More candidates to accelerate drug development
Every pharmaceutical company has countless unsolved structures
...and that is a real bottleneck for efficient drug development
We are aware how critical it is to know exactly the molecular structure of a chemical compound. Understanding the three-dimensional arrangement of the atoms of a molecule is a prerequisite for any development or even approval of an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API).
The substances can be examined in detail with the help of traditional, established techniques (most commonly X-ray diffraction) proven for more than 100 years - but only if they can be crystallized in the form of individual crystals of a certain size, which is between 10 and 500 micrometres.
The challenge
Growing crystals large enough for the X-ray experiments can take weeks, months or even years. This proves to be a true bottleneck for drug discovery and development.
The solution
With electron diffraction you skip re-crystallizing. Electron diffraction is the method of choice to elucidate structures as small as 50 to 500 nanometers, directly from the flask.
The application of ED for performing nanocrystallography is a disruptive innovation that is opening up fascinating new perspectives particularly for organic compounds required in the fields of chemical and pharmaceutical research.
From all compounds an average pharma company has on the shelf:
Statistics
*Estimate: assumptions based on own research and personal interviews
Does this sound like your case?
Crystals are too small
We all know: growing crystals to the size you need for SC-XRD measurements can take a long time and the unsolved structures in the shelves keep piling up
Need absolute configuration
With electron diffraction it is now possible to determine the absolute configuration of your materials using the dynamical refinement method
ASD micro-crystallinity
Amorphous solid dispersions are designed to overcome the solubility problem of the active ingredient. Electron diffraction can identify if an ASD is stable
Salt or co-crystal
The exact position of the hydrogen atom between the two synthons is very important to characterize an API. ED detects light atoms better
Sub-micron molecular analytics for your compounds
The Swiss start-up ELDICO Scientific helps to overcome these limitations. It developed the electron diffractometer – a totally new analytical instrument to analyse drug candidates. This enables industrial and scientific researchers to characterise yet unmeasurable nanocrystalline particles. ELDICO is able to perform fast and precisely on any sort of compounds and offers ready-to-install instruments that produce high-quality unambiguous structural information from nanocrystals directly and deliver reliable results within a few hours, at up to 70% less cost per measurement. For pharmaceutical companies, this allows accurate characterisation of a larger number pre-clinical candidates to confirm functionality as a potential drug, bringing them to market faster. A typical pharma company will save 6 month per drug candidate and save $5M, which sums up to significant savings per company and year.
About ELDICO
ELDICO Scientific AG (The Electron Diffraction Company) is a Swiss technology and service company founded in 2019 and based in the Switzerland Innovation Park Innovaare at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), a world-leading research institute for natural sciences and engineering. ELDICO develops, manufactures and commercializes electron diffractometers , i.e. novel analytical instruments for electron based crystallography, enabling to investigate nano-crystalline samples. ELDICO will launch the first instrument specifically designed for nano-crystallographic investigations. Proof-of-concept was achieved in 2018 (ETH Zurich, C-CINA Basel) as part of a Nano-Argovia project of the Swiss Nanoscience Institute (SNI). It was published in 2018 and awarded Top 5 "Breakthrough of the Year 2018" by the leading science magazine SCIENCE. In 2020 among other public recognitions on Swiss and EU level, ELDICO took 2nd place in the prestigious Pioneer Prize awarded by Technopark Zurich and the Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB). ELDICO’s clients are industrial and academic researchers in large and fast growing industries such as the pharmaceutical industry, the electromobility, and the advanced materials / MOF sector. The company partners with leading engineering companies and component suppliers among Dectris, Excillum and SmarAct to deliver superior performance. www.eldico-scientific.com