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Alfa Chemistry is a company with extensive knowledge and expertise in DNA-encoded libraries (DELs) technology research. We have the ability to design and synthesize DELs containing up to billions of molecules for customers and provide selection services for protein targets. Our goal is to help our customers solve complex problems and challenges, making us a trusted partner for pharmaceutical companies.

In order to better answer some of customers' questions about DELs, we provide this FAQ (frequently asked question) page so that visitors can find answers to their questions of interest. Listed below are several questions and answers about DELs.

Q1 What is DNA-encoded libraries?

DNA-encoded libraries (DELs) are collections of chemical molecules covalently attached to DNA tags which carry unique structural information about each library member and can be identified and amplified, allowing the synthetic history of attached compounds to be tracked by DNA sequencing. DELs can be used to screen hundreds of millions of small molecules to discover small-molecule ligands to protein targets. Therefore, DELs technology, as an emerging small molecule drug screening technology, has been widely adopted by many pharmaceutical companies.

Q2 Does the DNA tags attached to the molecule affect screening?

As a collection of small molecules with DNA tags, each nucleotide sequence in DELs are used to label the identity and structure information of the compound. For certain target proteins, the presence of DNA tags may in some cases affect the affinity or biological activity of the compound, but with appropriate optimization and design, this effect can be minimized, and more accurate evaluation of the compound's interaction with the target which will not affect the screening of active small molecules by this technology platform.

Q3 What is the relationship between DELs Technology and combinatorial chemistry?

The core of the combinatorial chemical synthesis method is "Split & Pool", which can synthesize a large number of compounds most efficiently, but there has been no effective method to analyze the screened data.

As a combination of combinatorial chemistry and molecular biology technology, DELs technology relies on combinatorial chemistry methods to build compound libraries and adds a DNA tag to each molecule. Not only can a compound library of up to 100 million levels be synthesized in a very short time, but the structural information of the compounds can also be obtained through DNA sequencing, solving the problem of combinatorial chemistry.

Q4 Do the larger the DELs and the greater the number of compounds in the library facilitate hits screening?

Limited by the existing sequencing technology, if the number of compound libraries is too large, it will cause some difficulties in obtaining and analyzing encoded data after screening, and reduce the probability of Hit discovery. In addition, it is also necessary to consider the complexity and time cost of screening, and the specificity of target proteins. Therefore, it is necessary to design a certain size compound library according to the actual situation to make it suitable for specific screening tasks.

Q5 What is the chemical space covered by DELs and the properties of the molecules in its library?

Chemical space refers to a collection of organic small molecule compounds that is described in a specific form based on their structural characteristics. DNA-encoded compound libraries can cover a wider chemical space, which is conducive to the expansion of the chemical space of drug-like molecules.

Compared with the members of early combinatorial chemistry compound libraries, most DNA-encoded compounds have lower molecular weights, and other properties such as druggability and activity are distributed within a relatively good range. Therefore, DNA-encoded compound libraries play an important role in drug development.

If you have further questions, please feel free to contact us.

✻ Please kindly note that our products and services are for research use only.