The Development of DNA-Encoded Libraries to Discover Therapeutically Valuable Low Molecular Weight Compounds for Alzheimer’s Disease

Traditionally, the search for a drug requires a large quantity of starting material, heavy screening costs, and a complex and costly infrastructure that allows for several hundred thousand compounds to be screened. This research proposal intends to use a revolutionary approach to generate 24 million drug-like compounds that have the potential to be relevant for Alzheimer’s disease. This new approach, called DNA-encoded library, or DEL, allows for screening of hundreds of millions of compounds and even billions of compounds in some cases. This technique requires a much smaller amount of starting material (on the order of millions of times less than the classical approach) and almost no special infrastructure. The three libraries of compounds we will build have at least 8 million compounds each. The compounds will be screened based on their size and structure to be useful in the context of Alzheimer’s disease.