A2Hit™

Antibody to Hit Technology (A2Hit™)

UCB's Antibody to Hit Technology (A2Hit™) is a new initiative arising from the synergy between its biologicals and small molecule research.  The concept involves using information about the binding characteristics of high affinity, function-modifying antibodies to guide both the targeting and the design of a new generation of small molecule drugs.

A2Hit™ aims to minimise biological risk in the early stages of drug discovery, by using antibodies to validate the target and the specific site on the target and also to mitigate chemical risk by using antibodies to validate specific contact atoms and their three dimensional positions in space.  Knowledge of antibody-target structures enables the virtual screening of databases of chemical compounds. Selected compounds are assayed for function, and hits are converted to leads and finally to drugs using medicinal chemistry.

The integration of advanced antibody technology, structural biology and computational chemistry within UCB's A2Hit™ initiative offers new insight and promise for deriving novel small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of serious disease.