By Dr Roger A. Edwards, Dr Kai Zhang and Louise Firth Different companies have employed various techniques and strategies for addressing productivity issues in the chemistry functions within pharmaceutical discovery and preclinical development. We benchmarked lead optimisation, clinical candidate selection, and chemistry support for preclinical development before IND filing in… Read More
Fine-tuning the technology strategies for lead finding By Sandra Fox, Dr Shauna Farr-Jones, Dr Lynne Sopchak and Dr Helen Wang HTS has become the workhorse of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies' drug discovery efforts, with expanding responsibilities and increasing pressures to screen more targets with better compound libraries to find high-quality… Read More
Nanolitre Dispensing - On the point of delivery By Dr John Comley Precise low-volume liquid handling methodologies are still sought after by those interested in enabling miniaturised HTS. This article reviews the need for nanolitre dispensing and provides a current perspective on those emerging technologies that have the potential to… Read More
Biotechnology, Bioterrorism & Biosecurity By Dr George Poste Advances in genetics and biotechnology offer great promise in the fight against infectious diseases. But the same technologies will also increase the threat from bioterrorism. Governments must accord 'biosecurity' a higher priority in defence and foreign policies to reduce the risk of… Read More
High throughput genomics and drug discovery - parallel universes or a continuum? By Dr Mark Beggs and Audrey Long HTS has been in place for approximately 10-12 years and has achieved a threeorder of magnitude scale up. Genomics has been in a 'high throughput' mode for approximately four years for… Read More
Lead Generation and Lead Optimisation: the value of linking HT co-structure analysis and HT chemistry By Dr David U Prichard The coupling of High Throughput co-structure analysis with focused library generation is not only proving a powerful general tool in lead optimisation but also increasing the probability of successful discovery… Read More
By Dr Mark L. Nelson Less than a hundred years ago, if you developed a microbial infection your immune system couldnt handle, you died. Then came the wonder drugs, antibiotics capable of fighting the infections for you. But times have changed. Now, because of antibiotics, their use and misuse, the… Read More
The Future of Cardiovascular Gene Therapy By Christopher J. Reinhard Advances in regenerative medicine go hand in hand with new perspectives and insights into potential treatments for heart disease. After a decade of pre-clinical and early Phase 1 and 2 clinical studies, gene therapy is now emerging as a genuine… Read More
Chemical microarrays - The drug discovery superhighway By Elaine Seeskin While producing targets was once the bottleneck in the drug discovery process, in the post-genomic era this has been superseded by the requirement for high-quality lead structures. As a result of the pool of genomic data and countless unvalidated targets… Read More
Obesity - The 21st century disease By Diane L. McBay and Dr Colin T. Dourish Obesity will be the leading cause of death and disability in the 21st century. This epidemic is largely attributable to increasingly sedentary lifestyles and the abundance of tasty, high-fat foods. Obesity increases the risk of… Read More
Channelling Drug Discovery - Current trends in ion channel drug discovery research By Dr David Owen and Andrew Silverthorne Ion channels are proteins that span cell membranes thus forming conduits or 'channels' through which charged ions such as sodium and potassium can pass across a normally impermeant barrier such as… Read More
Key R&D informatics challenges facing small/medium-sized pharmaceutical and biotech companies By John Wise The ability of R&D informatics to deliver real benefit to the SME pharmaceutical company is constrained by the increasing burden of non-discretionary computer systems combined with the lack of opportunity to leverage the economies of scale enjoyed… Read More
Business strategy for implementation of biomarkers in drug development By Miles Flamenbaum With pharmacoproteomic biomarkers being the subject of focus among regulatory agencies as well as research institutions, many pharmaceutical companies are increasing their interest and investment in biomarker strategies. This article discusses the potential for new efficiencies and cost… Read More
From raw data in the laboratory to information availability in the enterprise By Dieter Kreusel If pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies could measure their success merely on the volume of raw data accumulated from screening assays and pre-clinical testing, they would be basking in the glow of unprecedented success. Companies are… Read More
By Dr Patrick J. Vojta, Vincent P. Kazmer and Dr Larry D. Kier Adverse drug responses are an important post-marketing public health issue, occurring many times in subsets of treatment populations. Promising new approaches to predicting physiological responses to drugs are focused on genomic responses or toxicogenomics (1). This article… Read More
Proteomics In Drug Target Discovery - High-throughput meets high-efficiency By Dr Terence E. Ryan and Dr Scott D. Patterson Biochemistry is enjoying a renaissance under the guise of 'proteomics' due to the availability of sequenced genomes, advances in mass spectrometry and associated data analysis. Its application to drug discovery and… Read More
