Blaze

Blaze™ is Cresset's ligand-based virtual screening platform designed to boost hit discovery performance while significantly reducing wet-lab screening costs. By leveraging the electrostatics and 3D shape of a query ligand, Blaze rapidly searches large chemical collections — up to 10 million structures in just a few hours — to identify molecules with similar three-dimensional properties. The platform is built for medicinal chemists and drug discovery teams seeking to explore vast chemical space efficiently, delivering hit rates as high as 30% and a high diversity of results.

Blaze is accessible as a cloud-based solution through Blaze Cloud, a secure, encrypted web browser session offering fast and flexible virtual screening without the need for local infrastructure. Seamless integration with Flare™, Cresset's computer-aided drug design (CADD) platform, further streamlines experiment preparation, as well as visualization and post-processing of screening results.

Key Capabilities and Benefits

• Rapidly screen up to 10 million commercially available structures in just a few hours
• Achieve hit rates as high as 30% with a high diversity of identified compounds
• Increase the diversity of project leads and back-up compounds
• Explore novel areas of chemical space beyond existing chemotypes
• Find novel lead-like hits starting from known active compounds
• Replace peptides with non-peptide alternatives, or steroids with non-steroidal scaffolds
• Achieve substantial improvements in the physicochemical and drug-like properties of hits
• Reduce the number of compounds that need to be purchased and tested in the laboratory
• Lower the environmental impact of drug discovery by minimising wasted chemicals

Scientific Applications and Use Cases

• Ligand- and structure-based virtual screening to combat antibiotic resistance
• Bioisosteric replacement strategies, including anti-HIV drug design applications
• Identifying selective leads for specific receptor subtypes, such as Cannabinoid receptor 2 from CB1 binders
• Avoiding chemotype bias through 3D electrostatic field and shape descriptors for diverse chemical space exploration
• Drug repurposing for oncology and other therapeutic areas using in silico approaches
• Finding new leads from peptides and natural ligands
• Prioritising the most promising virtual screening hits for progression to the laboratory
• Identification of hit compounds in novel target programmes, including insulin-regulated aminopeptidase (IRAP) inhibitor discovery

Deployment and Integration

• Available as Blaze Cloud, a SaaS virtual screening web server using secure, encrypted browser sessions
• Seamlessly integrated with Flare™, Cresset's CADD platform, for end-to-end workflow support from experiment setup through to results analysis
• Supports outsourced drug discovery projects through Cresset Discovery Services, a contract research organisation (CRO) specialising in early-phase small molecule discovery
• Access to integrated purchasable compound libraries, including Mcule's library, providing greater chemical diversity for outsourced and in-house projects

Blaze™ is supported by an extensive body of scientific resources including posters, publications, case studies, and webinars, demonstrating its application across a broad range of therapeutic areas and discovery challenges. The platform is suitable for both large pharmaceutical organisations running multiple projects and smaller teams seeking cost-effective, high-quality virtual screening capabilities.