A chemistry wiki to facilitate and enhance compound design in drug discovery

At AstraZeneca a focus on hypothesis-driven design and the formation of drug design teams has placed a greater emphasis on collaboration in the drug discovery process. We have created a novel software tool based on the principles of wikis and social networks to facilitate collaborative working, visual planning and incorporation of predictive science to improve design capability. Monitoring the design and make process via the tool enabled the identification of bottlenecks and delays. Solutions to these problems were implemented, reducing the time taken from the initial idea stage to the generation of the synthesised compound by more than 50%.

► Design and creation of a wiki-based tool for collaborative drug design. ► The tool collects data from multiple sources and summarises for different user roles. ► The tool was used to identify sub-optimal processes in drug design. ► Improvements were implemented to reduced design time by over 50%.