Drug Discovery World, Drug Discovery and Development News

Addressing the economic downturn through lab instrumental rental.

By Dr John Comley

The majority of life sciences labs are facing an unprecedented decline in capex budgets and their subsequent ability to purchase new laboratory instruments. The default option underpinning lab instrument and equipment sales to life sciences has historically been the outright purchase model.

Evolution of flow cytometry as a drug screening platform

By Dr Rob Jepras and Dr Steve Ludbrook Drug Discovery

Flow cytometry is used in many research and clinical laboratories. The largest users are immunologists and haematologists who use it for cell sorting and analysis. Requirements for processing larger numbers of patient samples led to the development of automated tube loading carousels and, later, multiwell plate-based sampling systems.

Chemical space, high throughput screening and the world of blockbuster drugs

By Dr Hakim Djaballah

We are constantly told that if a high throughput screen does not identify hit(s) then blame it on the compounds in your library. The community has accepted this notion and unleashed a chemical space exploration through the use of novel or pre-existing synthetic chemistries to supposedly generate better ones.

An automated approach to solving Pharma's cardiac toxicity conundrum

By Beppy van de Waart, Dr Walter Westerink and Dr Nuria PiÃ±eiro Costas

We are facing ever-growing difficulties in developing new drugs and bringing them to market. Many factors stand in the way of R&D productivity, not least of which are shrinking budgets. One of the most pressing challenges is ensuring new drug candidates have an acceptable safety profile.

Adoption of high content screening at HTS laboratories

By William Downey and Dr Jennifer Hartigan

Over the past five years, a majority of HTS laboratories have adopted high content screening (HCS) in their operations. As HTS laboratories have sought more biologically-relevant assays, cell-based assays and high content screening technologies have become more widespread.

Challenges and opportunities in the treatment of rare diseases

By Dr Philip J. Vickers

There are approximately 7,000 rare diseases, which from a regulatory perspective are defined as those diseases where there are less than 200,000 patients in the US or that affect no more than five in 10,000 of the general population in the EU.

DNA Sequencing: towards the third generation and beyond

By Andrew Szopa-Comley

Next-generation sequencing has expanded the frontiers of genomic research. Rapid developments in this field are lowering costs and increasing speeds. With the arrival of third generation sequencing, this technology is now being applied within clinical environments, where it has the potential to improve diagnosis and treatment outcomes of diseases such as cancer.

Realising the genome's potential in the context of the living cell

By Dr Amr Abid

A decade ago, with the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), scientists had the sequence of the human genome in hand. Once decoded, this invaluable source of data was anticipated to reveal the pathology underlying a host of diseases and to fill the gaps in our knowledge of normal physiological processes, biochemical pathways and the complex regulatory networks that control cell, tissue and bodily functions.