Metabolomics

Epigenetic Modulators of Histone Methylation By Dr Michael Thomenius and William P. Janzen Drug Discovery Epigenetics is a term that refers to the durable and context-specific regulation of transcription processes. The majority of epigenetics involves a complex system of enzymes, binding proteins and accessory proteins that control access to the genome by transcription factors and […]

Metabolomics – A Playbook for Functional Genomics By Dr David Ferrick If we have learned anything from scientific research in the last 20 years, it is that finding cures to complex diseases is difficult. Despite the promise of the genomic revolution, disease progression and patient outcomes are still not easily predicted by genetic factors alone. […]

With Synthetic Biology, Drug Discovery Is Going Virtual by Christopher Voigt Christopher Voigt is a professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his lab focuses on synthetic biology. Two major areas of interest for him are developing a genetic programming language for cells and applying synthetic biology to biotechnology challenges. Ultimately, […]

Microtissues For In Vitro Toxicity Assessment: Cost effective and in vivo relevant toxicology tools By Dr Stephanie Ravenscroft, Dr Caroline Bauch, Dr Laura Hinton and Dr Paul Walker Conventional two-dimensional (2D) cell models (adherent cells grown on cell culture plates or cells in suspension) are limited in their abilities to accurately predict clinical toxicity since […]

New Developments in Single Cell Separation and Analysis Technologies By Dr John Comley Drug Discovery Recent advances of single cell technologies are facilitating the opportunity to discern biological insights within individual cells and providing a means to reveal previously hidden relationships between individual cells within a population. Single cell technologies can be crudely split between […]

Individualised Systems Medicine: Next-Generation Precision Cancer Medicine and Drug Positioning By Tea Pemovska, Paaivi Östling, Caroline Heckman, Olli Kallioniemi and Krister Wennerberg A growing number of oncology drugs are currently clinically available and more than a thousand compounds are being developed for oncology indications. Thus, the challenge is to systematically develop all these drugs to […]

Precise genome editing: the key to a CRISPR drug discovery pipeline? By Dr. J. D. Wrigley, Dr M Maresca, Dr K Birmingham, Dr M Bohlooly-Y and Dr L M. Mayr From the pioneering days of Watson and Crick in 1953, to completion of the human genome project in 2003, advances in our understanding of DNA […]

New Tools Bring Greater Understanding to Cellular Metabolism Research By Dr John Comley The links between mitochondrial dysfunction and various diseases and pathological conditions are being increasingly revealed, such that mitochondrial analyses have gained renewed interest from both the academic research and drug discovery labs. This revival of interest in cellular metabolism assays is being […]

Automating The Drive Towards Personalised Medicine By Dr Alexandre Akoulitchev, Dr Howard Womersley and Dr Phil Jordan Interest in personalised medicine continues to grow, and epigenetic biomarkers are very informative in this respect, giving a clear indication of whether (and how) a patient’s gene expression profile has changed, as well as the rate of disease […]

Could The Keys To Precision & Personalised Medicine Be Rooted In Predictive Safety & Research Methods? By Robert G. Hunter To meet the massive challenges of future healthcare, perhaps no two facets hold greater promise than biomarkers for precision medicine and systems biology for personalised patient care. Although a high level of market fragmentation typically […]

Biomarker Discovery: The Need For New Generation Peptide-Protein Microarrays By Dr Nikolai Schwabe and Katherine Catchpole The progression from health to disease is marked by significant biological changes within an individual (1). Clinically presenting symptoms, however, can be non-specific and variable enough to hinder diagnosis, and may appear only after a disease has already become […]

The Great Neuro-Pipeline Brain Drain – Why Big Pharma Hasn’t Given Up On CNS Disorders By Julia Skripka-Serry Central Nervous System (CNS) disorders bear an economic burden of more than $2 trillion in the US and EU and rake in upwards of $80 billion a year for the pharmaceutical industry. Yet they have become as […]

Metabolomics: Analytic Methods Driving Exponential Understanding By Dr Ian D. Jardine Metabolomics is distinct from genomics and proteomics in several significant respects. Where genes and proteins are unique to specific organisms, metabolites are ubiquitous throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. Compared with proteomics and genomics, which quantify the building blocks and machinery of organisms, metabolomics […]

The Information Symphony: Data orchestration for a changing industry managing data on a platform for innovation. By Chris Molloy A leading ballet conductor (1) recently told me of courses which he runs for senior business leaders. He allows them to conduct an orchestra: first, very strictly, with close direction applied to each instrument; he then […]

Pathway Analysis – Understanding the bridge between environmental cues and cellular response By Dr John Comley Understanding the function of a protein in the context of normal and abnormal cellular processes requires a comprehensive knowledge not only of its regulation but also of its role in signalling and metabolic networks in the cell. Malfunctioning signalling […]

By Dr John Anson, Oxford Gene Technology Molecular biomarkers that define a particular state or condition are a powerful tool used to diagnose disease, highlight patients with a pre-disposition towards a given disease and to identify those who would benefit from a given therapy. Until now, most diagnostic tests have focused on single biomarkers. However, […]