Adapting drug discovery to Artificial Intelligence
Drug discovery has always been challenging; today, more so than ever. While there has been success in addressing many diseases, others remain intractable...
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Exploring horizons in 3D microscopy: what the future holds
The microscope slide is flat (2D), but the world around us is not – despite the flat-earth theories. We need volume information about our samples, ideally with high resolution in all three dimensions as well as over time – the fourth dimension...
Applications of molecular imaging in drug development
The world of healthcare is rapidly evolving. With an ageing population, comes a significant increase in cancers, metabolic diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. New drug candidates are required; however drug development remains a lengthy and expensive process, with the average timeline now over 10 years and costs continuing to rise...
Improving the translation of disease biology though phenomics
How times change. Up to 15 years ago, you would be hard-pressed to find a drug discovery conference with a track dedicated to phenotypic approaches. The underpinning science was called high-content imaging or analysis, being mainly confined to academic drug discovery labs and a handful of pioneers in industry. but…
Cancer drug screening: the historical perspective
Chemotherapy with cytotoxic and growth inhibitory drugs have played an important role in cancer therapy, used either alone or in combination with other treatment modalities such as surgery, radiation or biological therapy. Chemotherapy, in most instances, was the only alternative treatment for metastatic cancer – mainly given as drug combinations...
From fibroblasts to medicinal signalling cells: a paradigm shift in translational stem cell research
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are fibroblast-like cells that give rise to mesenchymal derivatives including bone, fat and cartilage cells. In addition to the bone marrow, they can be readily obtained from adult vascularised peripheral tissues including adipose, olfactory, respiratory tissue, and peripheral blood.
Urine-derived stem cells as innovative platform for drug testing and disease modelling
Kidneys are crucial for filtration of drugs and toxins and their proper function is essential for overall health. Unfortunately, due to disease and improper function, kidney transplantation or dialysis are necessary for millions of patients annually all over the world.1,2
Genomics in drug development and safety testing; from target identification to genomic toxicology
In the annual report of the Chief Medical Officer, 1 Dame Sally Davies has declared that we are part of ‘generation genome’ – the era in which we reap the rewards of our advances in genomic technologies and improvements in our understanding of the whole genome in human health.
Streamlining drug discovery assays for cancer and cardiovascular disease
For lead optimisation, target-based assays are still the most affordable means of rapidly performing fast iterations and remain core to screening. However, the desire for biological relevance is driving ongoing growth in cell-based assays.
Expert view: Rising growth of the global high‑content screening software and services market
The global high-content screening (HCS) software and services market accounted for over $500 million in 2017 and is expected to reach approximately $1.4 billion by 2026, increasing at a compound annual growth rate of more than 11%, says Jeff McMillan, Senior Product Manager Imaging, Molecular Devices.
Transforming translational research: CANscriptTM – a better predictive model for oncology
This webinar focused on a recent study evaluating a cohort of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patient tumours treated with anti-PD1 using CANscript™.
Expert view: It’s an exciting time for the use of stem cells in research and the treatment of human disease
The Nobel Prize-winning observations and discoveries of John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka have ignited an explosion of excitement around the potential use of stem cells in research and treatment of human disease.
Automated assessment of liver and cardiac toxicities in lead optimisation
This webinar, supported by Tecan, focused on the automated assessment of liver and cardiac toxicities in lead optimisation, using biochemical and human iPS cell assays.
Expert view: Overcoming the problems of working with human primary hepatocytes
Human primary hepatocytes (hpheps) are the gold standard for in vitro evaluation of drug metabolism, drug-drug interactions, and metabolic disease research. However, hpheps don’t survive in standard 2D culture for very long – no longer than two or three days.
Expert view: Biological therapeutics are becoming more popular, here are the reasons
For most people, traditional High-Throughput Screening (HTS) represents large automation rigs and large libraries of small molecules screened against drug targets, however, the development of biological therapeutics has been gaining considerable pace for many reasons.