Stem cells

The Industrialisation of Bioinformatics By Dr Alex Titomirov With the completion of the ‘draft’ sequence of the human genome predicting an estimate of 40,000-120,000 genes that describe us, the real work begins. The problem now is not lack of data but lack of tools to thoroughly analyse what we already have and what’s coming in […]

By Dr David C. U’Prichard It is almost axiomatic that the pharmaceutical R&D industry has not achieved in the last decade an increase in productivity (measured as high value NCEs) commensurate with the explosion of new biological information, chemistry techniques and information storage/retrieval/examination systems, let alone the real increase in industry R&D expenditure. In particular, […]

By Dr Ashok R. Dongre and Dr Stanley A. Hefta The genomic sequencing efforts spawned the field of proteomics by providing the basic blueprint for protein sequences, enabling proteomics to become the contemporary technology for studying the underlying mechanisms of disease. This review will address the technologies related to proteomic research and the application of […]

The Genie in the Test Tube – From Gene to Gene Therapy: Part 1 By Dr Jan Steiner For thousands of years, medicine was a descriptive art, with treatments for disease arising from astute observation and trial and error. The rise of modern forms of biological sciences, especially the developments in molecular biology over the […]

Emerging therapeutic vaccines By Marc Hertz, Soren Mouritsen and Anand Gautam The excitement over the past 30 years for immunotherapy of cancer and other diseases has not led to the expected clinical successes. Over-enthusiasts predicted a cure for cancer with the initial development of monoclonal antibody technology, and later the ‘magic bullets’ or toxin-labelled antibodies. […]

HTS a strategy for drug discovery By Dr AR Knight, Cerebrus Ltd Whichever technologies are implemented, high throughput screening is set to become one of the cornerstones of drug discovery, however deciding which strategy to implement will provide many headaches. This article concentrates on screens identifying the interaction of small molecules with protein targets rather […]

By Matthias Mann, Protein Interaction Laboratory (PIL), University of Southern Denmark Affinity proteomic methods can translate genomic data into validated targets for drug discovery. Baits such as tagged gene product or small molecules obtained from cell-based assays are used to purify interacting proteins. These proteins are then identified by high sensitivity, high throughput mass spectrometric […]

Using Expression Databases for Drug Discovery By Dr Greg Lennon Reference databases are being built cataloguing the amount of RNA each gene makes under different conditions and in different individuals. These databases can be mined easily and effectively to aid the drug discovery process. The success of the Human Genome Project provokes the question: what […]