Biochemistry

Increasing the chances of lead discovery By Sandra Fox, MBA, Dr Helen Wang, Dr Lynne Sopchak and Dr Richard Khoury For HTS laboratories worldwide, the mission is to supply therapeutic groups in the shortest time possible with high quality hits and leads that will become drug candidates. Mounting pressure to screen more targets against more […]

The Genie in the Test Tube – From Gene to Gene Therapy: Part 2 By Dr Jan Steiner In the previous edition, we discussed gene therapy in terms of potential vectors and their applications. Now, we discuss the potential clinical uses of these constructs. To date, the main applications of gene therapy have been in […]

Discovery Research in the Co-Genomic Era – Biology goes industrial By Dr Timothy Wells and Dr Georg Feger The parallel between the search for gold in the last century and drug discovery in the co-genome era is very clear. As with all gold rushes the rewards will go to the most creative entrepreneurs who can […]

High-throughput Crystallisation By Dr Sara Moran and Dr Lance Stewart With structure-based drug design on the increase can the development of high-throughput crystallisation fulfil its promise to revolutionise the drug discovery process? In an era when the development of drugs is hindered by the exorbitant costs of discovery and clinical trials, any method that can […]

By Dr David C. U’Prichard It is almost axiomatic that the pharmaceutical R&D industry has not achieved in the last decade an increase in productivity (measured as high value NCEs) commensurate with the explosion of new biological information, chemistry techniques and information storage/retrieval/examination systems, let alone the real increase in industry R&D expenditure. In particular, […]

By Dr Ashok R. Dongre and Dr Stanley A. Hefta The genomic sequencing efforts spawned the field of proteomics by providing the basic blueprint for protein sequences, enabling proteomics to become the contemporary technology for studying the underlying mechanisms of disease. This review will address the technologies related to proteomic research and the application of […]

The Genie in the Test Tube – From Gene to Gene Therapy: Part 1 By Dr Jan Steiner For thousands of years, medicine was a descriptive art, with treatments for disease arising from astute observation and trial and error. The rise of modern forms of biological sciences, especially the developments in molecular biology over the […]

HTS a strategy for drug discovery By Dr AR Knight, Cerebrus Ltd Whichever technologies are implemented, high throughput screening is set to become one of the cornerstones of drug discovery, however deciding which strategy to implement will provide many headaches. This article concentrates on screens identifying the interaction of small molecules with protein targets rather […]

By Matthias Mann, Protein Interaction Laboratory (PIL), University of Southern Denmark Affinity proteomic methods can translate genomic data into validated targets for drug discovery. Baits such as tagged gene product or small molecules obtained from cell-based assays are used to purify interacting proteins. These proteins are then identified by high sensitivity, high throughput mass spectrometric […]