Enter TRAP® Tutorial

TRAP® (Target-Related Affinity Profiling) is a proprietary drug discovery platform technology. In traditional small molecule screening, as many as 2 million compounds may be tested in order to identify the few that interact selectively with a disease-related protein target. TRAP can achieve similar results by screening as few as 200 computationally selected compounds.

TRAP takes advantage of the fundamental principle that all pharmaceutically active molecules work by interacting with a protein target. Telik measures the binding of a small molecule to a proprietary reference panel of proteins to create a profile for each compound. Telik scientists have created a database of profiles for tens of thousands of compounds. They use sophisticated computational tools to search this database and identify drug candidates more rapidly than with alternative technologies.

Telik has used TRAP to identify its own lead drug candidates including TELCYTA® and TELINTRA® and the additional compounds in our pipeline. In addition, we have used TRAP in corporate and academic collaborations. Through a successful TRAP collaboration announced in 2003, the global pharmaceutical company Roche exercised its option to select active lead drug compounds identified through the collaboration, resulting in a milestone payment to Telik. Our TRAP research collaborations with leading cancer research centers have included the University of Arizona Cancer Center, Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In addition, Telik has entered into a license agreement under which SRI International is developing a novel anti-inflammatory compound we discovered through the application of TRAP.

What is TRAP? - TRAP® Tutorial