By Dr Anil Vasudevan Since the original publications on the benefits of conducting organic reactions in a microwave by Gedye (1) and Majetich (2) in the mid-80s, the uptake of this technique was sluggish at best for the next 12-14 years. However, the past few years have witnessed an explosion… Read More
High Throughput Screening in Academia - Drug discovery initiatives at the University of Kansas By Dr P McDonald, Dr Roy, Byron Taylor, Ashleigh Price, Dr Sittampalam, Dr Scott Weir, Dr Chaguturu Academia has historically been involved in exploring the fundamental aspects of the disease targets and in developing tool molecules… Read More
Next Generation Immunoassay Systems and the Revival of Protein Biomarkers By Dr John Todd and Dr Sara J. Agee Proteins are the machinery that drive most biological processes; however, measuring their concentrations at low levels has been historically impeded by a lack of appropriately sensitive technology. Advances in immunoassay technology,… Read More
Prediction versus Attrition in Drug Discovery & Development By Professor Malcolm Young The research-intensive part of the pharmaceutical industry is facing unusual commercial difficulties, whose elements are now well-known. A substantial number of very valuable drugs have gone, or are about to go, off patent; too few good new premium… Read More
Growing Interest in Outsourcing Ion Channel Services By Dr John Comley Summer 2008 Significant demand now exists in Pharma and Biotech to access ion channel testing services and this is reflected by the number and the variety of service offerings. In the highly competitive area of cardiac safety hERG testing… Read More
Progress in the Implementation of Label-Free Detection - Cell-based assays By Dr John Comley Progress made in the use of impedance and optical grating technologies for label-free detection of cell-based assays where examined in HTStec's recent Cell-Based Label-Free Detection Trends report. Uniquely all of these label-free offerings are plate-based and… Read More
Emerging Real-time PCR Applications Dr Mikael Kubista Since its introduction on the commercial market little more than 10 years ago, real-time PCR has become the main technical platform for nucleic acid detection in research and development, as well as in routine diagnostics. In 2007 the real-time PCR market revenue in… Read More
Integrating HTS and Fragment-based Drug Discovery By Dr John Barker, Dr Thomas Hesterkamp and Dr Mark Whittaker High-Throughput Screening and Fragment Based Drug Discovery have been considered as alternative approaches to drug discovery for enzyme targets. HTS tends to be a rather quick way of identifying potent chemical matter with… Read More
Data Overflow Progress in Automating and Streamlining Data By Peer Staehler The genomic world moves faster and faster. The pool of data has exploded exponentially in the past few years due to the growing knowledge about the relevance of genomic findings for medicine and the environment. Like all other developing… Read More
Transcending Proteasome Inhibition for the Treatment of Cancer By Dr Mark Rolfe Healthy cellular function requires a carefully controlled balance between protein synthesis and protein degradation, a process known as protein homeostasis. The major intracellular pathway for controlling protein degradation is the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS). Specific pharmacological inhibition of… Read More
Screening the Human Kinome - Expectations Met or Promises Pending? By Dr Richard M. Eglen Protein kinases are important targets in drug discovery programmes aimed at treating cancer, autoimmune disorders, diabetes and neurological disorders. Novel information on kinase biology is opening up other approaches in the design of selective inhibitors… Read More
HIV Therapy - Past, Present and Future By Dr Laura Waters Since the identification of HIV in 1983 and licensing of AZT in 1986 we now have more than 20 agents available for HIV treatment from five drug classes. This article will review recent advances in HIV treatment and discuss… Read More
The Potential of Molecular Imaging for Drug Discovery & Development By Dr Ken Rubenstein By combining cutting-edge biomedical research with the time-proven ability to visualise the unseen, the rapidly emerging field of molecular imaging promises to open new vistas for a wide range of individuals, from basic researchers to scientists… Read More
Is Amyloid-related Toxicity an Inevitable Consequence of Ageing? By Dr J Mark Treherne and Dr David IC Scopes Amyloid-related toxicity need not necessarily be the inevitable consequence of ageing, if some of the new drug discovery strategies to treat neurodegenerative and other ageing-related diseases succeed in the clinic. An increasing… Read More
Dispense and Imaging Assays - Moving towards a more balanced use of both fluorescence and flash luminescent readouts By Dr John Comley Progress towards the uptake and adoption of flash luminescence readouts in screening were the subject of HTStec's recent Dispense & Imaging (D&I) Trends 2007 report. The report suggests… Read More
The Importance of Liquid Handling Quality Assurance in Drug Discovery By Dr Nathaniel G Hentz The tug-of-war between quality and productivity is an issue facing all drug discovery companies, competing in a fierce race to bring breakthrough drugs to market before the competition. With the advance of laboratory automation… Read More
