Current and Emerging Trends In Immunogenicity Research In November 2011 Drug Discovery World hosted a collegial style roundtable discussion on the present and emerging developments in this fundamental area of drug discovery and development. The participants are drawn from the biopharmaceutical, biotechnology and vendor community. Although somewhat sketchy in places… Read More
Ontario as a Life Sciences Powerhouse By Michael Stewart Around the world, competition between life sciences companies is fierce. And so is the competition between jurisdictions wanting to attract the good paying jobs, innovative spirit and R&D that comes along with this important economic sector. Different jurisdictions, including the UK,… Read More
Share Share Tweet Email Stem Cell Banks: Investing in the promise of cancer stem cell science Stem Cell Banks: Investing in the promise of cancer stem cell science By Madeline Page and Rosario Isasi The national and international demand for stem cell lines of varying origins (eg human embryonic, induced… Read More
By Dr John Anson, Oxford Gene Technology Molecular biomarkers that define a particular state or condition are a powerful tool used to diagnose disease, highlight patients with a pre-disposition towards a given disease and to identify those who would benefit from a given therapy. Until now, most diagnostic tests have… Read More
Epigenetics: Targeting the mediator between environment and phenotype By Dr John M. Rosenfeld, Dr Kan Saito and Dr Michael Sturges Although it is still early days in terms of our understanding of epigenetics, the fast development of new tools and technologies to define genome-wide epigenetic variations in humans has the… Read More
DNA Diagnostics Gets Digitised - Quantitative real-time PCR By Dr Mikael Kubista and Dr Anders Stahlberg Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) has during the last two decades emerged as the preferred technology for nucleic acid analysis in routine as well as in research. qPCR has the sensitivity to detect a single… Read More
Targeting Target Cancer Metabolism - What is fuelling the resurgence? By Dr Neil P. Jones Targeting the metabolic pathways of cancer is a hot topic for drug discovery. The central dogma is that cancers have a higher demand for metabolic inputs to aid proliferation and survival and that this could… Read More
Utilising Biomarkers to Eliminate Drug Candidates with Cardiotoxicity in Preclinical Development By Dr Federica Crivellente The rapidly escalating costs of drug development is causing the biopharmaceutical industry to focus its R&D efforts on identifying new technologies and methods that can predict the safety and efficacy of new compounds as early… Read More
Early Patient Stratification is Critical to Enable Effective and Personalised Drug Discovery and Development By Dr David A Fryburg, Dr Diane H Song and Dr David de Graaf With the current chances of an efficacious outcome in Phase II for novel mechanisms being in the region of 1 in 5,… Read More
In Vivo Preclinical Imaging - An Essential Tool in Translational Research By Dr John Comley In vivo imaging of small animals (mainly mice) is increasingly being deployed across the drug development process, particularly in the oncology/cancer therapeutic area. One of the main applications is monitoring the treatment response for early… Read More
The Post Genomic Era: What Does It All Mean? By Dr Chris Torrance Information may no longer be a bottleneck to understanding and tackling complex genetic diseases such as cancer. For those who cut their research teeth not so very long ago, before PCR was thought of by Kary Mullis,… Read More
By Dr Cliff Murray Drug Discovery The pharmaceutical industry is still struggling to cure cancer despite pouring enormous resources into the search for new treatments. We take a look at the some of the current technologies for the discovery and delivery of molecular diagnostic, prognostic and predictive tests and speculate… Read More
High Throughput Screening Systems: Impact of Reliability on Downtime and Drug Discovery By Dr John Comley This article reports the results of a survey on the reliability of automated HTS assay systems and the effect of reliability on output. Evidence supporting the view that high throughput screening (HTS) systems have… Read More
Protein Biomarker Immunoassays: Opportunities and Challenges By Dr M. Walid Qoronfleh and Dr Klaus Lindpaintner With the biopharma industry under heavy pressure, transforming the scientific interchange between the laboratory and the clinic is exceedingly critical. Realising the costly toll of drug attrition in late-stage development, many companies are turning to… Read More
Moving Forward With Label-Free Technology By Dr Jennifer Hartigan, Cindy Liu and William Downey Label-free technology is gaining acceptance and opening doors for new drug discovery. Relatively new in the well-established world of high throughput screening (HTS), label-free technology provides opportunities for probing biomolecular interactions without spatial-interference, auto-fluorescent or quenching… Read More
New Mechanisms and Expanded Indications for Biologic Therapies: a perspective on immunology research and development By Dr Susan B. Dillon Over the past decade, the introduction of biologic therapies has had a profound impact for millions of patients with immune-mediated arthritides, inflammatory bowel diseases and plaque psoriasis. Today, five anti-Tumor… Read More
