NCE & NBE drug discovery overview

UCB’s approach to drug discovery and development encompasses both New Chemical Entities (NCEs) and New Biological Entities (NBEs), which means that serious diseases may be addressed through a range of targets and disease pathways.

NCEs

NCEs are chemically derived; man-made and developed to treat a wide range of diseases. NCEs, which usually have a molecular weight below 500 daltons, are referred to as small molecule drugs. They are often designed to be orally bioavailable (that is, pill format) and are capable of addressing both intracellular and extracellular targets. UCB has a range of technologies that facilitate the discovery and development of NCEs. Read more about this in Science and Technologies

NBEs

NBEs may be defined as biological products, for example, proteins, peptides, antibodies, viruses and vaccines, used to prevent or treat disease. Significantly, they can address all extracellular targets and may be referred to as large molecule drugs. UCB specialises in the development of antibody-based drugs whose molecular weight is generally greater than 50,000 daltons. They are not yet orally available, that is, they are most often administered by intravenous injection or infusion or subcutaneous injection. Their advantage over NCEs is that antibody-based drugs are highly specific to their targets and can block protein/protein interactions.

By developing both NCEs and antibody-based drugs, UCB is able to address targets in an optimal manner, allowing flexibility between selectivity of antibodies and convenience and lower cost of NCEs, at the optimum point of therapeutic intervention. In addition, UCB is connecting chemistry and biology in new ways, leveraging the potential of these two disciplines to advance new research.

To understand how UCB uses its antibody technology to develop NCEs please refer to A2Hit™.