Researchers from Leiden University, fueled by this desire, have pioneered a groundbreaking approach to drug discovery. This unique treatment removes the compelling yet cumbersome step of DNA-barcoding from DELs’ traditional DNA-Barcoding workflow. DELs have been an incredibly important mechanism for over a decade for finding new medicines. The ingenious system created by the Leiden team provides a more rapid and flexible solution. This breakthrough has the potential to change the entire field of pharmaceutical research.
Their new method uses mass spectrometry to directly detect and identify small molecules. This approach is based on molecular weight and fragmentation pattern analysis. Most importantly, it quickly wades through chemical oceans of compounds. To date, their team has beautifully crafted chemical libraries that are rich with hundreds of thousands of individual unique compounds. Each compound is designed from different combinations of molecular building blocks.
Advancements in Drug Discovery
The Leiden team has created an amazing process. It allows you to build a library of that could be up to half a million compounds in a few days! This intensive development schedule is indeed a hugely ambitious step forward. Traditional small-molecule drug screening methods depend heavily on large, costly robotic facilities that test one molecule at a time, which makes this improvement even more impressive.
Pomplun, a lead researcher on the project, described what inspired this new approach.
“We thought, what if we could do the same kind of screening, but without the DNA at all?” – Pomplun
He expanded on the difficulties of traditional drug discovery pipelines, saying,
“In drug discovery, you usually start with a huge collection of molecules and hope that one of them sticks to your target protein.”
These traditional high-throughput screening methods are notoriously time-consuming and costly.
“Traditionally, pharmaceutical companies test these molecules one by one in enormous robotic facilities, so-called high throughput screening. It’s effective, but it’s also incredibly expensive and slow,” – Pomplun.
The element of mass spectrometry makes it more efficient. At the same time, it improves academic laboratories’ accessibility more broadly.
Promising Results and Broader Applications
Early results from this Leiden research team show that their new approach is already producing fruitful results. The approach proved successful at identifying nanomolar binders for challenging cancer-associated proteins. It emerged as a powerful tool to target difficult, complex molecules that DNA sequencing methods have found so challenging.
Pomplun emphasized the potential impact this could have on the field of drug discovery:
“We wanted to make drug discovery faster and more accessible,” – Pomplun.
He strongly believed that this new approach would democratize early-stage drug discovery. It would buoy the capacity of more academic labs to engage with this important research frontier.
“With our method, academic labs could also more easily take part in early-stage drug discovery,” – Pomplun.
The flexibility of this new approach allows researchers to explore previously unstudied types of molecules, broadening the horizons of medicinal chemistry.
Future Implications for Pharmaceutical Research
The application potential of this research has broader implications. Harnessing new technologies to rapidly generate and screen libraries of compounds presents tremendous new opportunity. This is an approach that’s particularly conducive to finding treatments for diseases that are hard to target.
The research conducted by Edith van der Nol and her colleagues has been published in Nature Communications with DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65282-1. Pharma and academia are both looking to accelerate their drug discovery processes. This smart, new approach developed at Leiden University might pave the way for a faster and more effective medicine development.
“It’s faster, simpler, and opens the door to exploring new kinds of molecules that we couldn’t study before.” – Pomplun.
The research conducted by Edith van der Nol and her colleagues has been published in Nature Communications with DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65282-1. As pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions look to streamline their drug discovery processes, this innovative method from Leiden University may herald a new era in medicine development.
