"Scientists Against Malaria," a collaborative drug discovery research initiative

"Scientists Against Malaria" (SAM) is an international virtual organization designed to apply modern drug design and modeling techniques in combination with industry std. infrastructure and interdisciplinary science to develop new treatments against malaria. Our strategy strongly relies on the use and development of a novel collaborative research workflow where several computational and exptl. groups meet thanks to new technol. information systems.[p]The first pipeline project of SAM will be described, which is devoted to finding hit compds. against the genetically validated target Pfmap-2 (a P. Falciparum MAP kinase) from a novel chem. library. The strategy involves several virtual screening techniques, including pharmacophore based searching and receptor-based virtual screening based on several docking algorithms. The output of the docking expts. were integrated by a new consensus scoring function developed for this purpose. Preliminary results have identified, and exptl. validated recombinant Pfmap-2 activity of 5 lead compds. showing an interesting chem. diversity.