Assay development optimisation & technology

Technology Innovation Will Help Prepare Drug Discovery for Smart Screening Era By Dr Clive Green and Dr Philip Spencer Drug discovery is undergoing a transformation powered by advances that magnitude more molecules and enable smarter selection of compounds. We are on the cusp of having previously unimaginable amounts of information about each target and many […]

High-Throughput Spheroid Culture – Applications of 3D Cell Culture By Hilary Sherman, Dr Richard M. Eglen & Audrey Bergeron In this article, we describe applications of high-throughput screening using 3D cell culture to assess cell viability. In addition, we highlight the importance of including multiple cell types in 3D assays to more accurately assess potency […]

The Use of Next-Generation Sequencing in Drug Development By Keith Nangle & Mike Furness This article summarises some of the technical and regulatory challenges posed by next-generation sequencing technologies and the efforts being made to address them. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has moved from the realm of research into those of clinical development, drug approval and […]

By Dr Simon Moore, Dr Kirsty Harper & Dr Sylwia Marshall The impact and effective routes of non-clinical safety assessment of inhaled biopharmaceuticals. With the rapid generation of biological screening data and the potential for innovative selection of compounds for screening, the importance of multivendor collaborations together with improvements in automation has never been greater […]

Therapeutic Antibodies – New tools to enhance the antibody drug pipeline By Dr Robert Ford & Dr Toni Hoffmann Therapeutic antibodies are the fastest growing class of drugs, with continuous increases in the number of innovator and biosimilar drugs in development. Drug development and clinical trials necessitate the ability to specifically, sensitively and reproducibly measure […]

By Paul Avery & Richard Massey Flow cytometry is a powerful tool for cell quantitation and analysis across a wide range of clinical and research applications. Most commonly used in the fields of immunology and haematology, recent improvements in instrument automation and throughput mean that the technique is now emerging as an increasingly attractive high-throughput […]

Drug Discovery in the Age of Big Data – The Impact of RNAi & CRISPR/Cas9 Technologies By Dr Prem Premsrirut This article discusses how RNA interference and CRISPR/Cas9 technologies are helping to build better mouse models and push drug discovery into a new era. Most, if not all, consumers are feeling the weight of rising […]

Novel Drug Targets From Phenotypic Screening By Dr Jim Freeth, Dr Elizabeth Kingsley & Jo Soden Identifying functional molecules with the potential to be developed into new therapeutics is often the sole aim of phenotypic drug discovery. However, the approach also provides valuable opportunities to uncover previously unknown, disease-specific drug receptors that can then be […]

The Rise of Immunotherapies – Strategies to Accelerate Their Advance Into Clinical Trials By Edward Cribb The striking rise of immunotherapies in the past decade has had a transformative effect on the prospects for the treatment of patients with cancer. Also referred to as biologic therapies, immunotherapies are a new class of drug that harnesses […]

New Approaches to Sample Identification Tracking and Technologies for Maintaining Stored Sample Quality By Dr John Comley Safeguarding the quality of stored samples (both compounds and biospecimens) must be the driving ethos in compound management stores and biorepositories. Yet there are few innovations in available sample storage technologies that can help them easily identify poor […]

Raising The Bar On The Biologics Potential Dr Michael Mouradian In the quest for safe, efficacious and profitable therapies, pharma research is changing. There is continued pressure to fill the drug pipeline and, at the same time, globalisation of personalised medicines is complex, expensive and requires a significant time commitment. With budgets being tight and […]

Advancing the Drug Discovery Pipeline with Early Stage In Vitro ADME and Toxicity Testing By Dr Maureen Bunger With increasing pressures on pharmaceutical companies to develop new, effective therapeutics across the board, and keep the costs of development down, the drug discovery industry needs to ensure that its standard processes and procedures are as streamlined […]

Long-Read Sequencing Offers Path to More Accurate Drug Metabolism Profiles By Dr Jenny Ekholm In the complex drug discovery process, one of the looming questions for any new compound is how it will be metabolised in a human body. While there are several methods for evaluating this, one of the most common involves CYP2D6, the […]

3D Cell Culture – A Rapidly Emerging Technique for Drug Discovery By Hannah Gitschier, Dr Ye Fang and Dr Richard M. Eglen The past decades have witnessed significant efforts toward the development of three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures. Today, 3D cell cultures are emerging not only as a new tool in early drug discovery, but also […]

Pharma Derisking: Approaches to Reduce Liability to Major Metabolically-Driven Causes of Drug Attrition By Guy Webber Intelligent application of early in vitro testing can help mitigate major drug development risks. The pharmaceutical industry is inherently risky. To develop a molecule that has a desired, efficacious but yet safe effect in humans is a remarkable achievement […]

Spheroids Rapidly Becoming a Preferred 3D Cell Culture Format By Dr John Comley There are many advantages associated with culturing cells in three-dimensional (3D) versus conventional two-dimensional (2D) tissue culture. Scaffold-free 3D cell culture systems that generate spheroids (and other similar multicellular aggregations) have proved useful as they offer an easy route to access 3D […]