Optibrium and InfoChem collaborate on retrosynthetic analysis in StarDrop

CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM - Mar 19, 2019 - Optibrium™, a developer of software for drug discovery, today announced a collaboration with InfoChem GmbH, a leader in cheminformatics. The collaboration provides StarDrop™ users with easy access to ICSYNTH light, an entry-level version of InfoChem’s computer-aided synthesis design (CASD) software to generate synthesis pathways for a target molecule. By stimulating new and unbiased ideas, researchers can explore alternative or novel synthetic routes with the potential to save time and reduce costs. 

StarDrop seamlessly connects with a wide variety of internal and external informatics systems, providing users with full support for compound design and optimisation through a single interface. The latest partnership further increases the number of extensions available to StarDrop users, free of charge. 

ICSYNTH light uses a transform-based approach to generate synthesis pathways for target molecules, even if these are novel and/or unpublished. The advanced cheminformatics algorithm suggests precursors using chemical rules automatically generated from reaction databases, with machine learning approaches. The results can be explored as a synthetic tree with each step supported by literature citations describing a similar precedented transformation.

StarDrop can access ICSYNTH light to evaluate possible synthetic pathways for new molecules designed in StarDrop’s interactive designer or Nova module. This provides an invaluable tool for chemists to easily understand the synthetic tractability of proposed new molecules.

This free extension to StarDrop can be downloaded from the Optibrium Community website.

Dr Matthew Segall, Optibrium’s CEO, commented: “This partnership with InfoChem continues our collaborative approach to working with leading providers of technology and services for drug discovery and other chemistry fields. We have developed StarDrop to seamlessly connect with a wide range of informatics systems thus giving our customers ultimate choice and flexibility, and providing everything they need for effective compound design and optimisation through a single interface.”

Dr Josef Eiblmaier, Managing Director of InfoChem, said: “InfoChem has a long tradition in developing software solutions for the retrieval and handling of structures and reactions. Customers are demanding ever more powerful and innovative tools to process the increasing amount of data arising from the constant progress in scientific knowledge. We are delighted to be working with Optibrium on the integration of both companies’ industry leading software, to enhance researchers’ own knowledge and expertise by providing the tools to help generate new and balanced ideas.”

For further information on Optibrium or StarDrop, please visit www.optibrium.com, contact info@optibrium.com or call +44 1223 815900.

For further information on InfoChem or ICSYNTH, visit www.infochem.de, contact info@infochem.deor call +49 89 2030432410.