Mass Spectrometry is a mature technology predicated on a premise demonstrated almost a century ago. It is widely used in most scientific disciplines involving basic research or industrial endeavours, that require accurate and precise measurement of elemental and molecular components. More recently it has become one of the foundation technologies… Read More
Is the Pharmaceutical Industry Open For Innovation? By Dr Jackie Hunter CBE Open innovation is the hot topic in many industries and this approach has the potential to make a radical difference to the costs of drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry. But there are also barriers to… Read More
High Throughput Flow Cytometry for Discovery at UNMCMD and the NIH Molecular Libraries Initiative By Dr Larry A. Sklar and Dr Bruce S. Edwards Commercial flow cytometers became widely established in research and clinical laboratories in the 1980s. Once the domain of immunologists and hematologists for cell sorting and analysis,… Read More
Biomarkers Make Their Mark on Current Research and Drug Development Trends By Stephane Parent and Dr Gregory Cosentino Biomarkers continue to become increasingly relevant in research and healthcare applications, as evidenced by the global market for products involved in their identification, validation, and use estimated at $8.3 billion in 2007… Read More
3D Cell Culture: Easier said than done By Dr John Comley The transition from cell culture on the flat surface of a conventional two-dimensional (2D) culture vessel to a three-dimensional (3D) environment, matrix or scaffold with 3D architecture has begun, and is providing much needed support for emerging applications in… Read More
Personalised Medicine Market and Regulatory Landscape By Dr Enal Razvi and Dr Patricia Hurley Over the past several years, there has been continuing interest in the deployment of personalised medicine via the development of companion diagnostics/therapeutics. The leading edge of this discipline is in the cancer personalised medicine arena where… Read More
Overview of Companion Diagnostics in the Pharmaceutical Industry Part 2: Business models. By Dr Stephen Naylor and Toby Cole There is an emerging consensus that the development of Companion Diagnostics appears to offer a set of tools to address many of the current problems that pharmaceutical companies must overcome. This in… Read More
Stem Cells for Cellular Therapy Space By Dr Enal S. Razvi and Dr Gary M. Oosta This article explores the emerging market landscape vis--vis the use of stem cells as cellular therapeutics. For more than 40 years, hematopoietic stem cells have been utilised as cellular therapeutics in a number of… Read More
Towards Unbiased Biomarker Discovery Dr Jens Hoefkens High-throughput molecular profiling technologies are routinely applied for biomarker discovery to make the drug discovery process more efficient and enable personalised medicine. The ability to find novel biomarkers rests on large-scale data generation and unbiased data analysis. Over the past decade, biomarker discovery… Read More
By Dr John Comley Laser scanning cytometers have matured over the past decade to meet the needs of end-users for higher throughput cell analysis, to access to previously difficult applications and to keep pace with the diversity of new fluorophores, validated high content screening (HCS) assay kits and reagents now… Read More
By Dr Mikael Kubista Quantitative real-time PCR is becoming mature technology for the quantification of nucleic acids. It is spreading wide outside its original use in the research laboratories, becoming preferred technology for a range of applications, many that require specialised so lutions and adaptations. Integration with pre-analytical steps and… Read More
Utilising 3D nuclear DNA methylation patterns in cell-based assays for epigenetic drug screening By Professor Jian Tajbakhsh, Professor Arkadiusz Gertych and Professor Daniel L Farkas Since epigenetic changes are thought to underlie a wide range of complex diseases, the scope of epigenetic drug therapy is likely to expand, as epigenetic… Read More
By Dr Stephen Naylor and Toby Cole In this article we describe the current state of Companion Diagnostics and its impact on the pharmaceutical sector, and the need for Companion Diagnostics in the drug discovery and development process. This perspective is augmented by a consideration of the development of Companion… Read More
Design Of Experiments: Useful statistical tool in assay development or vendor disconnect By Dr John Comley The use of design of experiments (DOE) in assay development (AD) has the potential to speed up assay optimisation (ie reduce assay development bottlenecks) and to facilitate a more thorough evaluation of assay variables. Read More
Innovations In Drug Discovery Technology By Dr Al Kolb Technology has been a major driver of advances in drug discovery. Automation, nanofluidics, imaging, software and assay technologies have played a major role in getting better data, faster. Is drug discovery at such an advanced state that further improvements are no… Read More
Maximising the impact of technologies on drug discovery through portfolio management By Charles S. Dormer, Dr Mark Beggs, Dr Lynn Brennan and Roanna London The opportunities to invest in new technologies in drug discovery are broad and extensive. Knowing where to place your investment and ensuring return on these investments… Read More
