Lead optimisation

Automated Compound Management Evolves To Meet The Drug Discovery Demands Of The Future By Dr Caroline Engeloch and Dr Daniel Baeschlin The development of new drugs involves testing hundreds of thousands of compounds, from high throughput screening through to subsequent lead optimization. Recognizing the importance of a compound bank in supporting drug discovery activities, as […]

Fluorescence Lifetime Assays By Dr Graham Cotton, Dr Wayne Bowen, Dr Robert Grundy and Dr Ulrich Hassiepen The benefits of fluorescence lifetime-based technologies (FLT) have been highlighted for more than a decade but thus far they have failed to gain widespread acceptance. Significant improvements in assay reagents and availability of HTS-compatible readers, however, have now […]

By Dr Alejandra Solache, Robert Brockett, Trinette Chuang, Dr Robin Clark, Rey Dimagiba, Dr April Fisher, Dr Wayne Speckmann and Dr Chun Yang Antibodies have become a vital tool among researchers in the life sciences and are routinely being used in a number of diverse immunoassay applications, including Western blotting (WB), immunoprecipitation (IP), flow cytometry, […]

Partnering with the right CRO is a winning strategy for companies big and small By Dr Davide Molho The Bio-Pharma business model is undergoing radical changes. Over the last two decades, we have seen the biopharmaceutical industry gradually become more willing to look externally and embrace the concept of outsourcing as it looks for new […]

Outsourced Kinase Profiling Services: Adding Value To In-House Kinase Programmes Dr John Comley Biochemical kinase profiling using a large panel of kinases with a broad coverage of the human kinome has become the de facto norm within the Pharma industry. The importance of this activity is demonstrated by the large number of service providers offering […]

Stem Cells Rapidly Gaining Traction in Research and Drug Discovery By Dr John Comley A recent market survey on stem cells in research and drug discovery showed that despite a significant amount of hype and hope around stem cells, most drug discovery-related efforts today still fall into the category of basic research and the majority […]

Realising The Genome’s Potential In The Context Of The Living Cell By Dr Amr Abid A decade ago, with the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), scientists had the long-awaited sequence of the human genome in hand. Once decoded, this invaluable source of data was anticipated to reveal the pathology underlying a host of […]

Adoption Of High Content Screening At High Throughput Screening Laboratories By William Downey and Dr Jennifer Hartigan Over the past five years, a majority of HTS laboratories have adopted high content screening (HCS) in their operations. As HTS laboratories have sought more biologically-relevant assays, cell-based assays and high content screening technologies have become more widespread. […]

Evolution Of Flow Cytometry As A Drug Screening Platform By Dr Rob Jepras and Dr Steve Ludbrook Flow cytometry is an established technology used in many research and clinical laboratories. The largest users are immunologists and haematologists who use it for cell sorting and analysis. Increasing requirements for processing larger numbers of patient samples led […]

An Automated Approach To Solving Pharma’s Cardiac Toxicity Conundrum By Dr Walter Westerink, Dr Nuria Piñeiro Costas, and Beppy van de Waart The pharmaceutical industry is facing ever-growing difficulties in developing new drugs and bringing them to market (1,2). Many factors stand in the way of R&D productivity, not least of which are shrinking budgets. […]

Fragment Library Design – The Evolution Of Fragment Based Lead Discovery By Dr Edward Zartler, Dr Chris Swain and Simon Pearce With the growing need to streamline the drug discovery process, screening against fragment libraries rather than drug-like molecules has become increasingly adopted as an integral part of many drug discovery programmes. However, success depends […]

Nanobioscience & Nanotechnology: The Future Of Personalised Medicine By Abhishek Gottipati, Joseph M. Sanders and Dr Scott A. Tenenbaum Nanotechnology has been more than a buzz word in the business world for a long time now and has been striding ahead, living up to the hype. There is a general ambiguity in defining ‘nanotechnology’ which […]

Epigenetics: Are We Hitting The Mark? By Dr Andrew J. Pope and Dr Amy M. Quinn During the last few years, advances in the understanding of epigenetic processes have led to an explosion in interest in this area as a potential source of new targets for the discovery of medicines. In addition, development of chemical […]

Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assays (ELISA): Recent Innovations Take Analyte Detection To New Levels By Dr John Comley Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) have been around as one of the primary methods of analyte detection for more than four decades. Over the years many changes to the basic format have resulted in assay improvements, but some of the […]

Editing the Human Genome: Role in Functional Genomics and Translational Medicine By Dr Chris Torrance and Eric Rhodes It is now readily accepted that we are in a post genomic era. With the steady flow of genomic information available to researchers worldwide, the focus turns to ways to analyse this information effectively and then utilise […]

Innovate While Derisking Drug Development: Yes We Can! Taher Abbasi, Pradeep Fernandes, Dr Shireen Vali and Professor Gurkirpal Singh The outlook for the drug industry continues to remain bleak in context of productivity and success rates. In spite of ongoing increase in R&D expenses and technology revolutions in the genomics and proteomics area, nearly 95% […]