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Lead Finder™

Great leads from high-throughput docking
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Lead Finder™ is equipped with a dedicated algorithm and scoring function for virtual screening. The algorithm is designed to rapidly dock and score ligands using a method that has been optimized to separate actives from inactives.

A study on the DUD dataset showed an impressive overall ROC AUC of 0.74 and a median ROC AUC of 0.76.

Flexible licensing terms enable you to use your entire cluster, maximizing your return on investment.

  • Process thousands of molecules per hour
  • Find novel leads through virtual screening
  • Design focused libraries with a high enrichment of active compounds through screening of larger sets of virtual compounds
  • Predict the 3D structure of active molecules
  • Dock covalent and non-covalent ligands to your protein
  • Rapidly assess new molecule designs for their fit to the protein active site

Lead Finder is a BioMolTech product distributed by Cresset.

References

  1. Stroganov O.V. et al., Lead Finder: an approach to improve accuracy of protein-ligand docking, binding energy estimation, and virtual screening, J Chem Inf Model. 2008 Dec;48(12):2371-85. PubMed ID: 19007114
  2. Novikov F. et al., CSAR scoring challenge reveals the need for new concepts in estimating protein-ligand binding affinity, J Chem Inf Model. 2011 Sep 26;51(9):2090-2096. PubMed ID: 21612285
  3. Novikov F.N. et al., Improving performance of docking-based virtual screening by structural filtration, J Mol Model. 2010 Jul;16(7):1223-30. Epub 2009 Dec 30
  4. Novikov F.N. et al., Lead Finder docking and virtual screening evaluation with Astex and DUD test sets, J Comput Aided Mol Des. 2012 Jun;26(6):725-35
  5. Zeifman A.A. et al., Hit clustering can improve virtual fragment screening: CDK2 and PARP1 case studies, J Mol Model. 2012 Jun;18(6):2553-66. Epub 2011 Nov 9
  6. Stroganov O.V. et al., TSAR, a new graph-theoretical approach to computational modeling of protein side-chain flexibility: Modeling of ionization properties of proteins. Proteins, 2011 Sep; 79(9):2693-2710. PubMed ID: 21769942

What our customers say

“As a global computational chemistry team within a contract research organisation (CRO), we aimed to improve the consistency, scalability, and scientific rigor of our molecular modelling workflows across a wide range of client projects. Cresset supported a smooth transition from a previously used commercial tool and helped address key limitations around accessibility and deployment at scale. A differentiated licensing model has enabled broad access across chemistry and biology teams while reserving advanced capabilities for computational chemistry specialists. This approach has helped balance accessibility, scientific depth, and efficient use of resources, enabling wider engagement without compromising rigor. The Cresset team have been highly responsive and knowledgeable, working closely with us to support adoption across a global user base. Training was organised according to user needs, with regular office hours providing an open forum for questions and ongoing support.

Overall, Cresset has become a valuable part of our computational chemistry toolkit, strengthening consistency, productivity, and confidence in decision-making across our organisation.”

Nicola Porta, Senior Scientist, Evotec

We are pleased to be working with Cresset’s software. This provides us with intuitive molecule design, a powerful ability to understand SAR and design plus a fresh way for generating novel and diverse structures for our projects.

Dr Kristian Birchall, Medical Research Council Technology, UK

We really like the powerful combination of excellent software tools and molecular design expertise which we get from working with Cresset.

Dr Graham Sibley, Head of Chemistry, F2G, UK

We wanted to use computational methods to suggest alternative substructures which could replace part of one of our key leads. We’d looked at other tools previously, without success, then turned to the Spark™ field-based approach. We looked at the top 50 hits from Spark and selected a subset to synthesise. Whilst the synthesised compounds exhibited a broad range of activities, we were delighted to observe that a number turned out to be nanomolar hits – with several even more potent than the original lead. One of these compounds is now our key lead against this target and further analogue synthesis is underway. Spark has certainly helped direct us towards some novel and very useful SAR on this occasion.

Laurent Rigoreau, Group Leader Medicinal Chemistry, Cancer Research Technology Discovery Laboratories

Cresset Discovery’s computational experience and high standard of scientific support is ideally suited to help drive the next stage of this project.

Dr Richard Boyce, Senior Director of Research, PhoreMost

The protein interaction potential capability [in Flare] highlighted common features across the family of targets of interest that we had not been able to visualize before. We used this information to drive ligand design into a direction we have not explored before.

Dr Martin Quibell, MAQU Chemistry Consulting, UK

We sought the scientific expertise within the Cresset Discovery team to utilize their novel field and shape-based virtual screening methods in Blaze™, and their proprietary Electrostatic Complementarity™ technique to help identify a backup series for our target effectively and efficiently. Ultimately we identified 9 novel chemotypes that were clearly distinct to those arising from docking and pharmacophore virtual screening approaches, which was an exciting outcome for us.

Dr Zara Sands, Head of CADD and Informatics, Confo Therapeutics, Belgium

Working closely with the Cresset Discovery team we aimed to identify a putative binding pose for a lead series in published PDB coordinates that was not only consistent with the kinetically deduced MOA but explained the established SAR as well. The furnished results were able to satisfy these goals and then be applied prophetically for ligand design purposes.

Twentyeight-Seven Therapeutics, USA

Medicinal chemists in my team find the covalent docking feature in Flare™ very intuitive to use.

Matthias Bauer, AstraZeneca, UK