Prestwick C. elegans Library

Prestwick Chemical, Inc. offers the first and currently the only C. elegans library of small chemical molecules specifically designed for Caenorhabditis elegans research programs. This library is a collection of 240 small molecules that have been carefully selected for chemical structural diversity as well as for good tolerability in C. elegans.

Why a C.elegans library ?

C. elegans models of human disease hold great promise for the discovery of new treatments. Screening of drugs on these models, however, is complicated by drug toxicities specific for C. elegans as well as by poor tolerance of C. elegans for most organic solvents (used to dissolve drugs).

Therefore, the selection of drugs was made by using following criteria:

Known Safety and Bioavailability in Humans
Chemical Diversity
Therapeutic Diversity
Solubility
Toxicity for C. elegans

Additional advantages

What makes the C. elegans library uniquely useful is that over 95% of its compounds are marketed drugs (all off patent), and have therefore been safely given to humans. If a compound were found to be active with sufficient potency, there is a high chance that a use patent could be filed and that the compound could rapidly be tested in patients.

Alternatively if a compound is active but with insufficient potency, optimized analogues can be synthesized. The chances that these analogues will be good drug candidates for further development are quite high since the initial lead is not toxic, is orally bioavailable with an acceptable half-life, and is well tolerated.

How provided ?

The C. elegans library^® is packaged in tubes. Each tube contains 10 or 20 mg of a different compound as dry powder. All compounds have a purity higher then 90%.

A database ready for use

The Prestwick C.elegans Library^® is provided with a standard data file (SDF) containing more than 70 fields in a hierarchical structure that can be individually customized (some data are pre-registered). Included with the Prestwick C.elegans Library^® is a CD-ROM containing structures and chemical names of the compounds constituting the library, as well as some useful biological data and useful information on the solubility of each compound and the highest tolerated (non deleterious) concentration in C. elegans.

The library is sold with no strings attached.