Zeneth
Expert decision support software for predicting the forced degradation pathways of organic compounds
- Zeneth is an expert, knowledge-based software that gives you accurate forced degradation predictions quickly.
- It is the only commercially available, actively maintained software of its kind.
Why do you need Zeneth?
- Zeneth is the cost-effective solution for scientists who need to understand the forced degradation pathways of organic compounds.
- Zeneth is your trusted degradation expert system. It is based on data implemented by scientists at Lhasa Limited, who continually work on the transformation knowledge base with current transformation knowledge.
- Zeneth can quickly give you predictions for a variety of degradation conditions whilst also taking into account the effect of excipients and impurities.
How is Zeneth Used
Zeneth is used across a range of industry sectors but most notably within pharmaceutical departments. The following provide an indication of how some of our members are using Zeneth as part of their workflow.
Genotoxic impurities:
Figure 1: A use case of a Lhasa member using Zeneth for the assessment of potential genotoxic impurities during early drug development stage/candidate selection. *Sarah Nexus could also be used at this stage.
In conjunction with experimental forced degradation studies:
Zeneth can be used to help determine the chemical structures of degradants detected by a mass spectrometer, or other detection methods, and to deduce the likely degradation pathways. Following processing of the parent compound through Zeneth, a range of filters can be applied to provide a results tree that is consistent with experimental findings.
Early warning system:
Zeneth has been used within exploratory formulations departments to understand and account for any potential degradation problems within the API at an early stage. This advanced understanding of the possible degradants informs future decisions around experiment and excipient selection, as well as identifying any testing requirements.
General Approach
Following submission of your structures to Zeneth, the structures are compared to the Lhasa knowledge base, or your own knowledge base that you have created using the Zeneth Knowledge Editor. Zeneth then predicts the first generation degradants by considering:
- the presence or absence of structural features
- the presence or absence of conditions (light, water, oxygen, radical initiator, peroxide, metal) as well as temperature and pH
- the relative likelihood of competing transformation
Each degradant is analysed to predict further degradation and its level of likelihood is shown. The results are displayed in an interactive tree graphic along with supporting data, such as the reasoning behind each prediction, transformation details and degradation pathways. The prediction is generated by applying expert knowledge rules in degradation to the data returned from the knowledge base.
Zeneth Knowledge Base
The Zeneth knowledge base is created and supplied by Lhasa Limited and contains data from published sources and data donated by our member organisations. This data is collated, checked and verified by Lhasa scientists before being used to develop new knowledge rules and relationships. These rules and relationships are based on empirical observations that are supported by an understanding of the transformation mechanism or by rigorous vetting.
Figure 2: A workflow giving an overview of how Zeneth takes a query compound and provides a prediction
Zeneth Knowledge Editor
The integrated Zeneth Knowledge Editor enables you to create your own knowledge base that is founded on the same schema used in the Lhasa-supplied Zeneth knowledge base.
This means that you can effectively capture your organisation’s knowledge from past research and make it useful and easily accessible to your current research programs. Using Zeneth Knowledge Editor, you can create and add knowledge, such as:
- transformations and structure-activity relationships (SARs)
- knowledge rules
- literature references
