Restructuring Proteomics to Enable Personalised Cancer Care By Dr Henry Rodriguez The genomics community has made great strides in our understanding of the molecular basis of cancer and these advances are slowly beginning to change the way we diagnose and treat patients. But genomic studies alone cannot capture the complete… Read More
The Benefits of Biological Modelling By Gordon Webster The enormous challenge posed by the complexity of biological systems represents a potential intellectual impasse to researchers and threatens to stall future progress in basic biology and healthcare. In recent years, increasing reliance on correlative approaches to biology has failed to resolve… Read More
Generation II DNA Sequencing Technologies By Dr Stephen F. Kingsmore, Dr Jenny C. van Velkinburgh, Dr Joann Mudge, and Dr Gregory D. May Generation II DNA sequencing has been widely heralded as a disruptive technology, generating tens of millions of random short sequences at efficiencies up to 20,000-fold greater than… Read More
Stem Cell Applications and Opportunities in Drug Discovery By Dr Mark A. Thiede The high attrition rate of late stage drug candidates has led the pharmaceutical and biotech industries to a reassess the in vitro models used to select and validate drug targets and subsequent lead molecules. Traditional cell lines… Read More
Letting the Target Determine your Compound Acquisition Strategy By Dr John Harris With compound libraries likely to remain the cornerstone of hit and lead discovery for the foreseeable future, this paper seeks to summarise current and future approaches to optimal library design and compound acquisition, using examples and experimental evidence… Read More
The Microplate Market Past, Present and Future By Dr Peter Banks Microplates and the peripheral markets of liquid handling and detection technologies exist within almost all laboratories performing assays. This article discusses what, if any, are their growth expectations and whether there are new technologies on the horizon that could… Read More
High Throughput Screening, High Content Screening, Primary and Stem Cells By Dr Richard M. Eglen Over the past decade, the use of cell-based assays has accelerated in modern drug discovery. Indeed, the majority of assays in either target validation or lead identification/optimisation all now employ cell-based technologies. Furthermore, a wide… Read More
Predicting Transporter-mediated Drug-drug Interactions Based on in Vitro Cell Permeability Assays By Dr Chris Bode Drugs may fail in clinical development or post-marketing for a variety of reasons: they may simply not be as effective as anticipated; poor pharmacokinetic properties may prevent them from reaching their intended target in therapeutic… Read More
Livening up HCS Imaging By Dr John Comley With the aid of recent end-user feedback, this article investigates interest in and use of live cell and kinetic HCS imaging; most wanted application areas: advantages of live cell HCS imaging; live cell HCS assays of greatest interest; what's limiting live cell… Read More
Building a Robust Portfolio of New Medicines to Combat Malaria By Dr Timothy N.C. Wells Malaria is one of the biggest killers of our time. Current estimates from the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggest that more than 250 million people are at risk worldwide. More significantly, almost a million people… Read More
Natural Product Pharmaceuticals - The third generation By Dr Melanie McCullagh Compounds derived from natural products have made a big impact on the pharmaceutical industry. Of the 1,010 NCEs approved between January 1981 and June 2006, 43 were unaltered natural products (NPs) and a further 232 (23%) were second generation… Read More
High Content Screening - The next challenge: effective data mining and exploration By Dr Kurt Zingler and Dr Stephan Heyse The use of high content screening within HTS is growing and with many past hurdles now overcome, the need for effective tools for data analysis is becoming paramount. Over the… Read More
Biomarker Signal Definition By Dr Gordon F. Kapke and Dr Nigel Brown Due to the numerous challenges in the industry, pharmaceutical companies are examining all aspects of the drug development process and rebuilding their associated business models as necessary. Companies need to improve success in late stage development, but what… Read More
How Pharma Companies Manage in a Tough Financial Climate By Paul Branthwaite Maintaining knowledge and experience internally is a challenge in today's financial climate, in SMEs and in big pharma. This article provides some tips on how companies can maintain their best staff or find reliable alternative options, especially at… Read More
Outsourcing for Innovation Takes on New Meaning By Richard Boehner Large pharmaceutical companies are moving quickly to outsource their drug discovery operations, predominantly to lower costs. This article argues that if outsourcing is done to capture value, ie developing and preserving intellectual property as a key competitive differentiation as well… Read More
qPCR Assays - End user practices and latest vendor offerings By Dr John Comley This review provides an insight into real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) assays today. Using end-user feedback it investigates interest in the targets for qPCR applications; primary application areas for qPCR analyses; the importance of emerging applications; how… Read More
