Numerate concludes research collaboration following delivery of new compounds targeting Hepatitis C virus

Here’s the news following our work to develop novel, small molecule compounds for the treatment of HCV. We were fortunate to have had the opportunity to partner with Presidio Pharmaceuticals, prove our drug design technology and gain valuable knowledge in this important area of research.

Presidio Pharmaceuticals and Numerate Conclude Research Collaboration; New Lead Compounds Targeting Hepatitis C Virus Discovered

San Francisco and San Bruno, California — April 23, 2010 — Presidio Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Numerate, Inc., today announced that they have concluded their two-year collaboration to discover new compounds that target hepatitis C virus (HCV).

“Numerate has demonstrated that its novel technology can deliver active lead compounds in a timely and cost-effective manner. We have decided not to pursue further development of these compounds for internal reasons,” said Omar K. Haffar, Ph.D., Presidio Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, who added, “Based on our positive experience, we would not hesitate to work with Numerate in the future.”

Guido Lanza, President and Chief Executive Officer of Numerate, stated, “We were very pleased to have had the opportunity to work with Presidio’s world-class HCV group. We believe the compounds delivered demonstrate the power of our drug design technology, and we plan to continue to work actively in the HCV area.”

To discover the novel lead compounds, Numerate scientists ran their platform on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), allowing them to search through spaces of hundreds of millions of compounds to identify those with the highest probability of activity against HCV. Those compounds were then synthesized and their properties tested in the laboratory.