Assays In-Depth Focus 2018
This Assays In-Depth Focus looks at applications of high content screening in autophagy, and complex biology for the precision medicine era.
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Articles
Expert view: Large‑scale stem cell expansion and differentiation
Stem cell-based technologies lay the basis for pioneering approaches in drug screening, toxicology testing, and regenerative medicine. The constant supply of high cell numbers in consistent quality needs scalable culture systems and standardised process conditions.
Expert view: GMP proteins for therapeutic manufacturing: combining consistency, safety, and supply
Cell therapies offer revolutionary new approaches for treating humandisease. Most of these treatments use GMP cytokines and growthfactors for the differentiation, expansion, and maintenance of cells.It is critical that GMP protein suppliers offer the optimal combinationof consistency, safety, and stable supply chain.
Antibodies In-Depth Focus 2018
In this In-Depth Focus, Stefan R. Schmidt discusses the current status and future perspectives of monoclonal antibodies and Tony Edge explains why the determination of aggregate is critical in the formation of monoclonal antibodies.
Expert view: Assays to measure the potency of therapeutic antibodies used in combination with other drugs for Immuno‑Oncology treatments
Growing evidence reveals that using single immunotherapies to treat oncological disorders may lead to cancer-killing T-cell overdrive,initiating life-threatening autoimmune reactions including cytokinestorm; also known as hypercytokinemia or Cytokine Release Syndrome(CRS). Recently, checkpoint blockade using anti-programmed cell death1 (anti-PD-1) inhibitors became a prevalent approach for stimulatinganti-tumour immune system.
Aggregate formation for monoclonal antibodies
Workflows are generated around the analysis of large protein-derived therapeutics. The use of different analytical techniques is necessary to support drug development and testing, and thus increase generation of these new therapies. One of the areas that is most critical to this process is the determination of aggregates.
Monoclonal antibody discovery: current status and future perspectives
Since the first description of how to generate monoclonal antibodies was published in the 1970s, this field of research has grown tremendously. Currently, more than 70 full-length antibodies or fragments are approved by the major regulatory agencies globally. Looking back, a lot has changed since this historic discovery.
Expert view: Managing the complexity of finding new targets and drugging the undruggable
Assessing targets that are unable – or rather, extremely difficult – to reach pharmacologically, has prevented researchers from achieving desired clinical successes, most notably in the realm of cancer research. However, many advances are being made to shedlight on these difficult yet desirable target areas.
Expert view: New developments in real‑time live‑cell analysis
Live-cell analysis is now a well-established method that is part of the everyday cell biologist’s armoury for understanding cell biology. For over a decade, the functionality, throughput, and ease of use offered by real-time live-cell analysis has provided a platform for accurate and reproducible cell biology analysis in multiple biomedical…
Human iPSC-derived functional cells are revolutionising phenotypic drug discovery and development
Effective drug discovery and development relies largely on the availability of predictive pre-clinical model systems; the absence of which has contributed to late-stage drug failures and high expenditures. New industry acceptance of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived cardiomyocyte assay systems for regulatory safety pharmacology is now resulting in broad…
The evolving role of three-dimensional in vitro cell culture techniques in drug discovery
Drug discovery is a lengthy process that proceeds through several stages. High-throughput screening (HTS) utilising whole-cell-based screening assays plays a fundamental role as a starting point for identifying novel compounds in the drug discovery process.
Upstream cell culture processes for the production of therapeutic proteins
Drugs of biological origin form the backbone of the drug discovery pipelines for many major pharmaceutical companies. These biologic therapeutics can be defined as proteins derived from eukaryotic cell culture processes. The ability of eukaryotic cells to undertake complex post-translational modifications makes them ideal vehicles for manufacturing proteins emerging from…
Complex biology for the precision medicine era: re-thinking the drug discovery process
Complex biology is a discipline acknowledging that performing biological experiments in vitro should take account of the complexity of the biological context.1 While this may be a noble aim, it has proven difficult to incorporate these elements into the drug discovery process, especially at the high-throughput screening (HTS) stage.2
Applications of high content screening in autophagy
Autophagy is an important process to maintain cellular homeostasis and function.1 Basal levels of autophagy are essential for most cells to remove unwanted protein aggregates and damaged organelles in order to prevent diseases.2 However, sometimes cells are unable to maintain physiological stability as a consequence of altered autophagy, which leads…
Drug Target Review – Issue 3 2018
In this issue: pharmacological targeting of mitochondrial dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease, the evolving role of three dimensional in-vitro cell culture techniques in drug discovery, and NGS: hunting mysterious ‘Dark Matter Genome’ towards rewriting the rules of genetic diseases.
