About Us
ChemModeling is a computational chemistry services company providing in-depth technical knowledge and expert tools in support of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and related industries.
History
ChemModeling traces its roots back to Tripos, Inc. of St Louis, MO. In 1995 Tripos entered into a collaboration that combined its significant computational chemistry capabilities with the synthetic resources of PanLabs, Inc. of Seattle Washington to generate high quality screening libraries. ChemSpaceTM, a virtual library technology was first created during this collaboration. In 1997 Tripos Inc. decided that it would be more effective to have design and synthesis operations combined in one organization. To that end, Tripos Inc. acquired the laboratories of Receptor Research in Cornwall England and named this division Tripos Discovery Research (TDR). The LeadQuestTM screening libraries were one result of TDR’s efforts. The company grew exponentially when it was chosen as a partner for Pfizer’s file enhancement program. Two key technologies, ChemSpaceTM and ChemCoreTM, helped secure the contract and meet compound delivery goals. In addition to library design, TDR engaged in a number of drug discovery projects, taking advantage of the significant software knowledge and capabilities provided by the computational group located at the Tripos, Inc. site in St Louis, MO. TDR became a leading knowledge driven, drug discovery services business that provided pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with novel approaches to drug discovery.
In 2007, Tripos was sold. Vector Capital acquired the Discovery Informatics division of Tripos. TDR, including the computational group in St. Louis MO, was sold to Commonwealth Biotechnologies. The computational group was moved from the Tripos facility in Brentwood to its own independent facility in Weldon Spring, MO. TDR was renamed Exelgen Ltd. In late 2008, Commonwealth Biotechnologies closed the Exelgen laboratory in Cornwall. The computational chemistry group was acquired by ChemVentures and together with synthetic chemistry facilities in San Diego, acquired from Galapagos, NV, continued to provide knowledge driven drug discovery services. In 2009, the chemistry facilities in San Diego were closed and ChemModeling was born as an independent organization providing modeling expertise and services. ChemModeling incorporates the expertise and experience of almost a decade and a half of library design and drug discovery projects.
Staff Members
Dr. Jon T. Swanson
Dr. Swanson joined Tripos from the Mississippi Center for Supercomputing Research where he provided consultation and maintenance of the software for the physical sciences, as well as teaching as an adjunct professor of chemistry at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Swanson's early career at Tripos was spent in the Technical Support group where he provided customers with advice and problem solving, primarily in the areas of chemoinformatics and combinatorial chemistry. He was a heavy contributor of scripts and programs to help enhance the use of Tripos software. He was also involved in several software development projects in the areas of combinatorial chemistry, database searching and structure activity relationships. He then moved into the Molecular Design Group of Tripos Discovery Research as a research scientist. There, he was involved in designing new LeadDiscovery™ libraries, targeted toward protein kinases, and in contract work with a number of customers. As part of the LeadDiscovery design work, Dr. Swanson developed new methodology for selecting library candidates and fast docking of virtual libraries. Dr. Swanson moved to Exelgen when TDR was bought by Commonwealth Biotechnologies and continued to be involved in a number of contracts ranging from pharmacophore detection, to lead optimization, to compound acquisition, to library design. He continued this work when the Exelgen computational group was acquired by ChemVentures. There he worked primarily on lead discovery and optimization for ion channel targets. Dr. Swanson has a Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, California, USA and a B.S. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.