IriDM will discover better drugs, faster through an innovative proprietary approach that integrates biology, screening technologies, chemistry and computational science. The company will use this approach to develop peptide- or small molecule drugs, initially targeting (orphan) G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs).

IriDM is using activation of recombinant receptors as a bioassay for ligand identification. The ligand is used subsequently to help elucidate receptor function (target validation), in addition to the development of screening assays (high throughput screening).

Whilst other companies are also targeting (orphan) GPCRs as drug targets, IriDM will isolate the natural GPCR ligands in a systematic way from a broad range of tissue extracts, for all known orphan GPCRs. It will then extract proprietary knowledge from all of the generated data (in conjunction with relevant public domain data) using a wholly integrated approach, through unique relational data mining software. This will close the loop between in silico and wet lab discovery by enabling the design of a consecutive series of optimised experiments leading to the desired drug discovery solutions. The process will generate a "virtual cycle" where experiments are selected based on an explicit assessment of their cost/benefit ratio.

The company"s IT driven approach constitutes a paradigm shift. A double gain in efficiency will give the company a significant edge over its direct competitors since:

• all data will be fully analysed and thanks the company"s unique data mining approach, significantly more useful information will be extracted;
• this information will then permit the optimum choice of the next wet lab experiments to be conducted (robot scientist programme) resulting in less but more useful data.

The company's peptidomics approach will speed up the efficiency gain even further.

IriDM is a spin-off from the K.U.Leuven. It uses proprietary data mining tools developed by PharmaDM, its parent company.