Archive for the ‘Cell-based Assays’ Category
University of Minnesota invention will help speed development of drug treatments for heart failure
Last Updated on Monday, 11 January 2010 05:33 Written by Editor Monday, 11 January 2010 05:33
Contacts: Patty Mattern, University News Service, (612) 624-2801, mattern@umn.edu
John Merritt, Office of the Vice President for Research, (612) 624-2609
Stacie Byars, Celladon, (206) 660-2588
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (11/23/2009) —Research conducted by University of Minnesota scientists, in collaboration with Celladon Corporation, has led to the invention of technology to more rapidly identify compounds for the treatment of heart failure.
Chronic heart failure is an increasingly important health problem. It is the leading medical cause of hospitalization and is expected to result in an estimated direct and indirect cost to the health care system of $37.2 billion in 2009 alone. About 5.7 million people in the United States have heart failure, and it contributes to or causes some 290,000 deaths annually. However, developing new treatments is an extremely costly and time-consuming process, taking nearly a decade to gain regulatory approval and requiring hundreds of millions of dollars.
The technology, developed by the universitys David Thomas and Razvan Cornea and Celladon Corporations Krisztina Zsebo, allows for increased screening efficiency of compounds capable of disrupting the interactions of proteins implicated in the development of heart failure. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) is used to measure disruption of the calcium regulatory system, which has long been implicated in cardiovascular disease. This will provide key information on a particular drugs likelihood of success early in the screening process, since compounds that decrease FRET are good candidates for further development.
“Dr. Cornea and I, along with our students, have worked for more than a decade developing methods for preparing membranes from purified components, and using FRET to detect changes in protein interactions,” Thomas said. “Scientists from Celladon saw the potential for drug discovery, and this resulted in a breakthrough that has added an exciting new dimension to our research program.”
The high-throughput assay, developed by the university team, is based on a reconstituted membrane system composed of purified lipid and protein components. This technique is especially important because the interactions of integral membrane proteins are more complex than soluble proteins, making it very difficult to produce a synthetic system that recapitulates the cellular interactions in a large-scale and reproducible manner.
Celladon, based in La Jolla, Calif., has acquired an exclusive license for the technology from the University of Minnesota for the development of molecular therapies for cardiovascular diseases. Celladon also provided funding for the research that allowed Thomas to further refine the assay.
“This technology is very important to the efficient selection and advancement of compounds with the potential to increase cardiac contractility and potentially accelerates product opportunities that will ultimately benefit patients and development partners alike,” said Krisztina M. Zsebo, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Celladon Corporation. “Celladon’s investigation and development of first-in-class CDN small molecules as intravenous and oral drugs for the treatment of acute and chronic heart failure sets us apart in the cardiovascular field and presents multiple partnering opportunities.”
Source: umn.edu
Posted under Cell-based Assays, Compound Screening, Press Releases | No Comments
DG-AMMOS: A New tool to generate 3D conformation of small molecules using Distance Geometry and Automated Molecular Mechanics Optimization for in silico Screening.
Last Updated on Monday, 11 January 2010 12:27 Written by Editor Monday, 11 January 2010 12:27
Discovery of new bioactive molecules that could enter drug discovery programs or that could serve as chemical probes is a very complex and costly endeavor. Structure-based and ligand-based in silico screening approaches are nowadays extensively used to complement experimental screening approaches in order to increase the effectiveness of the process and facilitating the screening of thousands or millions of small molecules against a biomolecular target.
Both in silico screening methods require as input a suitable chemical compound collection and most often the 3D structure of the small molecules has to be generated since compounds are usually delivered in 1D SMILES, CANSMILES or in 2D SDF formats.
Results: Here, we describe the new open source program DG-AMMOS which allows the generation of the 3D conformation of small molecules using Distance Geometry and their optimization via Automated Molecular Mechanics Optimization. The program is validated on the Astex dataset, the ChemBridge Diversity database and on a number of small molecules with known crystal structures extracted from the Cambridge Structural Database.
A comparison with the free program Balloon and the well-known commercial program Omega generating the 3D of small molecules is carried out. The results show that the new free program DG-AMMOS is a very efficient 3D structure generator engine.
Conclusions: DG-AMMOS provides fast, automated and reliable access to the generation of 3D conformation of small molecules and facilitates the preparation of a compound collection prior to high-throughput virtual screening computations.
The validation of DG-AMMOS on several different datasets proves that generated structures are generally of equal quality or sometimes better than structures obtained by other tested methods.
Author: David LagorceTania PenchevaBruno VilloutreixMaria Miteva
Credits/Source: BMC Chemical Biology 2009, 9:6
Lumpy Assay Results
Last Updated on Monday, 11 January 2010 12:23 Written by Editor Monday, 11 January 2010 12:23
When we screen zillions of compounds from our files against a new drug target, what can we expect? How many hits will we get, and what percentage of those are actually worth looking at in more detail?
These are long-running questions, but over the last twenty years some lessons have been learned. A new paper in J. Med. Chem. emphasizes one of the biggest ones: if at all possible, run your assays with some sort of detergent in them.
Why would you do a thing like that? Compound aggregation. The last few years have seen a rapidly growing appreciation of this problem. Many small molecules will, under some conditions, clump together in solution and make a new species that has little or nothing to do with their individual members. These new aggregates can bind to protein surfaces, mess up fluorescent readouts, cause the target protein to stick to their surfaces instead, and cause all kinds of trouble. Adding detergent to the assay system cuts this down a great deal, and any compound that’s a hit without detergent but loses activity with it should be viewed with strong suspicion.
The authors of this paper (from the NIH’s Chemical Genomics Center and Brian Shoichet’s lab at UCSF) were screening against the cysteine protease cruzain, a target for Chagas disease. They ran their whole library of compounds through under both detergent-free and detergent conditions and compared the results. In an earlier screening effort of this sort against beta-lactamase, nearly 95% of the hits (many of them rather weak) turned out to be aggregator compounds. This campaign showed similar numbers.
There were 15 times as many apparent hits in the detergent-free assay, for one thing. Some of these were apparently activating the enzyme, which is always a bit of an odd thing to explain, since inhibiting enzyme activity is a lot more likely. These activators almost completely disappeared under the detergent conditions, though. And even looking just at the inhibitors, 90% of the hit set in the detergent-free assay went away when detergent was added. (I should note that control cruzain inhibitors performed fine under both sets of assays, so it’s not like the detergent itself was messing with the enzyme to any significant degree).
They point out another benefit to the detergent assay – it seems to improve the data by keeping the enzyme from sticking to the walls of the plastic tubes. That’s a real problem which can kick your data around all over the place – I’ve encountered it myself, and heard a few horror stories over the years. But it’s not something that’s well appreciated outside of the people who set up assays for a living (and not always even among some of them).
So, let’s get rid of those nasty aggegators, right? Not so fast. It turns out that some of the compounds that showed this problem during the earlier beta-lactamase work didn’t cause a problem here, and vice versa. Even using different assays designed to detect aggregation alone gave varying results among sets of compounds. It appears that aggregation is quite sensitive to the specific assay conditions you’re using, so trying to assemble a blacklist of aggregators is probably not going to work. You have to check things every time.
One other interesting point from this paper (and the previous one): curators of large screening collections spend a lot of time weeding out reactive compounds. They don’t want things that will come in and react nonspecifically with labile groups on the target proteins, and that seems like a reasonable thing to do. But in these screens, the compounds with “hot” functional groups didn’t have a particularly high hit rate. You’d expect a cysteine protease to be especially sensitive to this sort of thing, with that reactive thiol right in the active site, but not so. This ties in with the work from Benjamin Cravatt’s group at Scripps, suggesting that even fairly reactive groups have a lot of constraints on them – they have to line up just right to form a covalent bond, and that just doesn’t happen that often.
So perhaps we’ve all been worrying too much about reactive compounds, and not enough about the innocent-looking ones that clump up while we’re not looking. Detergent is your friend!
Source: corante.com
Posted under Cell Analysis, Cell-based Assays, Compound Screening, Industry News, Press Releases | No Comments
Sirona Biochem Says SGLT Test Results Confirm Key ‘Breakthrough’
Last Updated on Friday, 9 October 2009 12:02 Written by Editor Friday, 9 October 2009 12:02
Sirona Biochem Corp. (TSX-V: SBM), an emerging biotech company focused on diabetes and obesity, says results of testing its unique SGLT inhibitor molecules demonstrate a key breakthrough milestone for Sirona Biochem.
Sirona Biochem CEO, Dr. Howard Verrico, said, “There are two vital steps in the early stage of drug testing: validation of concept i.e. a molecule is able to hit the desired target and secondly its in vivo effectiveness. This first round of testing has shown a key breakthrough milestone in the process of validating this concept.”
“The test results now mean we can proceed to find out whether the molecules are selective, safe and robust enough to have potential to be effective when they reach the parts of the body where the re-uptake of glucose needs to be limited.”
Dr. Bertrand Plouvier, Chief Scientist, said, “The results from the first round of screening are indeed very encouraging and Sirona Biochem will use the next following months to further study the molecules through specific assays to demonstrate their effectiveness and drug likeness.”
Dr. Verrico said management of sugar metabolism is a primary medical challenge associated with treating diabetes and obesity and that is why SGLT inhibitors show such promise in this regard. “At present SGLT2 inhibitors have demonstrated their ability to limit the re-uptake of glucose back into the blood stream from urine. However, they have been notoriously lacking in ability to resist being rapidly metabolized by the body, thus rendering them largely ineffective.
“What we have now done is show that our molecules, with their unique GlycoMim® technology, can inhibit the glucose transporter SGLT2. The next challenge, and an exciting one, is to show that our molecules are selective, safe and have the potential to have an increased efficacy compared to the current molecules undergoing clinical development.”
Sirona Biochem owns the worldwide product rights to a library of unique sodium glucose transporter (SGLT) inhibitors to treat diabetes and obesity. SGLT inhibitors, as previously stated, block the re-uptake of excess sugars from urine, which can then reduce high blood sugar towards normal levels.
Sirona Biochem has entered into a strategic partnership with TFChem, a drug discovery company based in Rouen, France. TFChem licenses its technology of fluorinated carbohydrate mimics: GlycoMim®, and products in development to biotech companies. This strategic partnership was completed by a detailed research and licence agreement signed on September 29, 2008.
23.6 million people, or 7.8% of the population of the United States, have diabetes. (February 2009 DACG.ORG)
Market Trends
In 2007, the prevention and treatment of diabetes and its complications was estimated to cost US$ 232 billion according to the International Diabetes Federation. By 2025, this is likely to increase to more than US$ 302.5 billion.
The diabetes drug market reached US$18 billion in 2005, and is expected to increase to $21-25 billion in 2011. With many new products yet to realise their full potential and the high incidence of T2DM expected in emerging markets, prospects for the sector look strong. Some of the fastest growing markets for diabetes are in emerging economies. India, China and Indonesia are in the top 5 for disease prevalence. The impact for both branded and generic drugs is considerable.
Furthermore, in recent years, obesity has become a major health problem for many post-industrial societies, so much so that in 2004, the United States Health and Human Services declared obesity to be a disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects that globally in 2005, 1.6 billion adults were overweight with at least 400 million adults obese. By 2015, approximately 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and 700 million will be obese. Obesity poses a major health risk because it greatly increases the risk of co-morbidities such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, and cancer. Recognizing the potential for a new blockbuster market, major pharmaceutical companies have increasingly focused on obesity and its causes and, in the process, seeking to identify many potential targets and pathways that could be exploited to create novel therapies.
Sirona Biochem’s website is at: www.sironabiochem.com where we feature the most recent information about the company and its activities. Alternatively, investors are able to e-mail all questions and correspondence to info@sironabiochem.com where they can also request to be added to the investor e-mail list to receive all future press releases and updates or call John Dougherty, Corporate Development at 604-641-4466.
About Sirona Biochem
Sirona Biochem Corp. (TSX-V: SBM) is an emerging biotech company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel drug compounds. The current focus is on treatments for Type II diabetes and obesity. Sirona has entered into a license agreement with TFChem S.A.R.L., a drug discovery company based in Rouen, France. TFChem licenses its technology of fluorinated carbohydrate mimics: GlycoMim®, and products in development to biotech companies. The license agreement with TFChem provides for research and development of new compounds known as SGLT Inhibitors. SGLT inhibitors are a new and exciting class of compounds that have great promise and potential to treat both diabetes and obesity.
Mark Senner President and Director
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
950-789 west pender street
vancouver, b.c., v6c 1h2
Direct: 604-641-4466
Fax: 604-608-5471
info@sironabiochem.com
Source: Marketwire
Researchers develop screening test for cells that activate immune system
Last Updated on Wednesday, 26 August 2009 11:31 Written by Editor Wednesday, 26 August 2009 11:31
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers are the first to design a large-scale, cell-based screening method that identifies which compounds activate immune-return cells that hold compact for prospective cancer-fighting vaccines.
The new screening technique can scan thousands and even millions of compounds to identify those that activate dendritic cells, which are on constant recon patrol throughout the body to scout out cancerous or infected cells and alert the immune system.
“Our assay is unique from other conventional ones in its sensitivity and cost- and time-efficiency,†said Dr. Akira Takashima, professor of dermatology and vice chairman for research and head of the project.
Dendritic cells (DCs) are considered key to developing future vaccines that can either mimic the body’s natural immune response or turn on immune responses that failed – due, for example, to cancer or an immune deficiency.
The team, which also included Dr. Norikatsu Mitzumoto, assistant professor of dermatology and the study’s lead author, and Drs. Hironori Matsushima and Hiroaki Tanaka, postdoctoral researchers in dermatology, created the cell-based biosensor system.
“We basically engineered DCs to express a fluorescent signal only when sensing activation signals so that you can identify immuno-stimulatory agents very easily,†said Dr. Takashima. Immuno-stimulatory agents launch the immune system.
The research appears on Blood magazine’s online Web site and will appear in a future issue.
“We have optimized the high-throughput screening capability – an experienced scientist can now test one thousand chemicals a day almost single-handedly,†added Dr. Mizumoto. Previously, scientists would have to test each compound individually, a time-consuming process.
Their research already has led to the discovery of several compounds that turn on dendritic cells, which are found throughout the body from skin to blood. They continuously scan the body at the cellular level looking for antigens – foreign cells and materials invading the body – and for molecular signatures of tissue damage or infection.
“Their primary job is to present antigens to the immune system so that you develop protective immunity for infection and cancer,†said Dr. Takashima.
The DC biosensor system should help pharmaceutical and biotech companies sift through large numbers of chemicals for ones that tell the dendritic cells to launch the immune response. It may also prove useful in identifying biothreat agents because it detects infectious pathogens with high sensitivity.
Dr. Takashima said he hopes to garner additional funding to discover potent immuno-stimulatory drugs by screening high-quality libraries of compounds.
Doing so may be the first step toward developing a new class of vaccines that force or trick the natural immune system to kick on, or initiate an immune response that can be copied and initiated artificially.
Other UT Southwestern researchers from dermatology involved in the study were Dr. Yasushi Ogawa, postdoctoral researcher, and Dr. Jimin Gao, former instructor.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Dermatology Foundation Career Development Award and the American Cancer Society Junior Investigator Award.
http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/
BioFocus DPI Extends Drug Discovery Collaboration with Lilly Drug Discovery & Development
Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 February 2009 11:56 Written by Editor Wednesday, 25 February 2009 11:56
BioFocus DPI has extended its drug discovery agreement with Eli Lilly and Company until end 2009. Under the terms of the agreement, BioFocus DPI will identify active compounds by screening of Lilly’s library compounds.
The agreement extension announced today builds on the successful collaboration begun in March 2005. BioFocus DPI has been working with Lilly on discovering new compounds that target specific cellular signal transduction pathways. With this agreement, Lilly secures continued access to BioFocus DPI’s screening and biology expertise to identify new potential target compounds.
‘We are pleased to extend this collaboration with Lilly into its fourth year,’ said Dr. Chris Newton, Senior VP, BioFocus DPI. ‘It is satisfying to know that BioFocus DPI’s drug discovery research consistently meets the standards of large pharma companies such as Lilly and that we are successful in these long term collaborative relationships.’
A new approach to functional screening of siRNA knockdown
Last Updated on Wednesday, 26 November 2008 01:55 Written by Editor Wednesday, 26 November 2008 01:37
KINGSTON, England, Nov. 25, 2008-Guava Technologies, Inc. presented at the recent Molecular Targets & Cancer Therapeutics Symposium* information on their recent advancements that describe an experimental methodology and the new Guava® Simplicity Analysis Software which exploit the advantages of plate based flow technology. These technological improvements result in an overall process that can significantly expedite the drug discovery process by providing a means for extraction of key findings from the highly complex data sets encountered with functional screening of siRNA knockdown assays.
Solid tumors comprise genetically heterogeneous cell populations whose growth and survival depends on the complex interplay of distinct, yet overlapping, signaling networks. A major challenge in developing a course of therapy is determining which signaling nodes to target for a specific malignancy. Profiles from siRNA gene silencing are integral to mapping disease-specific signaling cascade(s) and provide insight to key targets for therapeutic intervention. Successful siRNA screening relies not solely upon optimizing transfection, but also cell analysis systems capable of high content screening (HCS) at the single cell level, within overall populations (sample well), and across multiple data sets.
The presentation describes how the Guava EasyCyteâ„¢ Plus System, with integrated Guava Simplicity Software, provides a revolutionary platform for secondary target validation and compound screening. Guava Technologies’ flow cytometers overcome the limitations of inference-based measurements of transfection efficiency and protein knockdown through direct quantitiative analysis of populations at the single cell level. The Simplicity Analysis Software’s intuitive architecture and ease of use facilitates the process of asking biological questions on multi-dimensional data sets through visualisation of user-defined parameters in the form of heat-maps. Most importantly, comparative results are displayed at the experiment level rather than on an individual well/sample basis.
Specifically, using the EasyCyte Plus System in tandem with Simplicity Analysis Software, 23 agents were identified that had growth restrictive properties although significant variation across cell lines was observed. Further targeted gene knockdown via siRNA confirmed the presence of both activators and inhibitors of Camptothecin-induced apoptosis as well as gene targets for growth arrest. Screens for apoptosis and cell cycle, as well as phospho-signaling intermediates, defined compounds with mechanisms of action similar to and different from Camptothecin. Cell-based assays for phenotype and function revealed a number of cooperative and antagonistic interactions between signaling intermediates, their respective cascades, and cytoactive agents.
Overall, the acquired multiplex data set is shown to provide a more detailed view on the behaviour of each of the test compounds with respect to apoptotic induction, cell cycle progression, and the signaling cascades that regulate these cellular responses to drug treatment. In total, this experimental methodology, when used in conjunction with Guava Technologies’ cell analysis platforms and Simplicity Analysis Software, significantly expedites the drug discovery process by providing a means for extraction of key biological findings from complex result sets.
If you would like more information on this application it is available for download from http://guavatechnologies.com/cm/Resources/Scientific%20Pubs.html. More information about the company and its products is available at www.guavatechnologies.com.
Guava Technologies, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company, is the leading provider of on-demand, easy-to-use single cell analysis systems. Guava® Systems, including the Guava® Personal Cell Analysis (PCA), Guava Auto CD4/CD4%, Guava® PCA-96 and Guava EasyCyteâ„¢ Systems, are integrated, fully optimised, microcapillary cytometry systems with embedded absolute cell counting capability. Used worldwide by the life sciences, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries, as well as clinical testing institutions (outside the United States and Europe), products from Guava Technologies have broad applications in scientific research and throughout the drug discovery and lead optimisation process, as well as for cell counting and optimisation of commercial biopharmaceutical production. Guava Technologies offers a variety of assays and dedicated software modules for the Guava Systems, enhancing the system’s overall ease-of-use.
* Guava, Guava Technologies Logo, and all other trademarks are property of Guava Technologies, Inc. * Guava® Simplicity Analysis Software is for Research Use Only. Not for use in Diagnostic procedures. * This symposium took place at the EORTC-NCI-AACR meeting in Geneva, Switzerland (21-24 October 2008)
Thermo Fisher Scientific Introduces New Low Binding Surface for Cell Culture
Last Updated on Thursday, 23 October 2008 01:01 Written by admin Thursday, 23 October 2008 01:01
ROSKILDE, Denmark (October 21, 2008) - Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, has introduced the new Nuncâ„¢ HydroCellâ„¢ Surface for the cultivation of single cells and cell clusters in suspension. Designed to prevent cell attachment, the Nunc HydroCell Surface allows scientists to grow in suspension cells that are sensitive to unwanted activation and differentiation signals arising from cell adhesion. Furthermore, the adsorption of culture medium-derived proteins and cell-secreted proteins to the Nunc HydroCell Surface is minimal.
With the Nunc HydroCell Surface, more homogenous suspension cultures and higher yields of cells and cell-secreted proteins can be achieved across many cell culture applications, including those involving monocytes/macrophages and different types of stem cells. The Nunc HydroCell Surface is a thin layer of a covalently-immobilized super hydrophilic polymer and is available as sterile MicroWellâ„¢ plates, dishes and multi-dishes, all with a certificate-stating conformance to functional, sterility, non-pyrogenic and toxicity tests.
For more information on the new Nunc HydroCell, please visit www.thermo.com/hydrocell
HydroCell Surface is licensed from CellSeed Inc. in Japan.
Thermo Scientific is part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science.
About Thermo Fisher Scientific
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE: TMO) is the world leader in serving science, enabling our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. With annual revenues of $10 billion, we have more than 30,000 employees and serve over 350,000 customers within pharmaceutical and biotech companies, hospitals and clinical diagnostic labs, universities, research institutions and government agencies, as well as environmental and industrial process control settings. Serving customers through two premier brands, Thermo Scientific and Fisher Scientific, we help solve analytical challenges from routine testing to complex research and discovery. Thermo Scientific offers customers a complete range of high-end analytical instruments as well as laboratory equipment, software, services, consumables and reagents to enable integrated laboratory workflow solutions. Fisher Scientific provides a complete portfolio of laboratory equipment, chemicals, supplies and services used in healthcare, scientific research, safety and education. Together, we offer the most convenient purchasing options to customers and continuously advance our technologies to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, enhance value for customers and fuel growth for shareholders and employees alike. Visit www.thermofisher.com.
Posted under Cell-based Assays, Europe, New Products, Press Releases | No Comments
Thermo Fisher Scientific Introduces Novel Temperature-Responsive Cell Culture Surface
Last Updated on Thursday, 23 October 2008 12:58 Written by admin Thursday, 23 October 2008 12:58
ROSKILDE, Denmark (October 21, 2008) - Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, has introduced the new Nuncâ„¢ UpCellâ„¢ Surface for temperature-induced cell harvesting. Designed to enable quick dissociation of cells from the culture surface upon a simple change in temperature, the Nunc UpCell Surface negates the need for enzymatic treatment (trypsinization) and cell scraping, while maintaining cell viability and the integrity of surface receptors and antigens. Even cell types that are difficult to detach by other methods and contiguous cell sheets can be harvested from the Nunc UpCell Surface, and harvested cell sheets can be stacked on top of each other in order to create 3-D tissue models and co-cultures. The Nunc UpCell Surface is available as sterile MicroWellâ„¢ plates, dishes and multi-dishes, all with a certificate stating conformance to functional, sterility, non-pyrogenic and toxicity tests.
The novel Nunc UpCell surface consists of a covalently-immobilized polymer poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), or PIPAAm, which forms a thin, even layer on the culture dish or plate. Slightly hydrophobic at 37°C, the surface allows cells to attach and grow, but hydrophilic when the temperature is reduced to below 32°C, the surface will bind water and swell, resulting in the release of adherent cells with their underlying extracellular matrix (ECM). The retention of the ECM under the cells enables the harvesting of contiguous cell sheets with preserved cell polarization and cell-cell junctions and the attachment of one cell sheet to another cell sheet or a graft site without the use of fibrin glue or sutures. 3-D tissue models and co-cultures can thus be created without scaffolds and exogenous materials, greatly simplifying cell culture for tissue engineering.
For more information on the benefits of the new Thermo Scientific Nunc UpCell Surface and to see how this could transform cultures, please visit www.thermo.com/UpCell.
UpCell Surface is licensed from CellSeed Inc. in Japan.
Thermo Scientific is part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science.
About Thermo Fisher Scientific
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE: TMO) is the world leader in serving science, enabling our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. With annual revenues of $10 billion, we have more than 30,000 employees and serve over 350,000 customers within pharmaceutical and
biotech companies, hospitals and clinical diagnostic labs, universities, research institutions and government agencies, as well as environmental and industrial process control settings. Serving customers through two premier brands, Thermo Scientific and Fisher Scientific, we help solve analytical challenges from routine testing to complex research and discovery. Thermo Scientific offers customers a complete range of high-end analytical instruments as well as laboratory equipment, software, services, consumables and reagents to enable integrated laboratory workflow solutions. Fisher Scientific provides a complete portfolio of laboratory equipment, chemicals, supplies and services used in healthcare, scientific research, safety and education. Together, we offer the most convenient purchasing options to customers and continuously advance our technologies to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, enhance value for customers and fuel growth for shareholders and employees alike. Visit www.thermofisher.com.
Posted under Cell-based Assays, Europe, New Products, Press Releases | No Comments
Cell-Based Assays: Innovations in Reagents, Technologies & Screening October 23 – 24, 2008
Last Updated on Thursday, 23 October 2008 12:56 Written by admin Wednesday, 22 October 2008 04:56
Cell-based assays provide one of the most valuable tools in drug discovery. They are routinely used in target validation, HTS campaigns, structure activity relationship analyses and ADMET studies. Many factors need to be considered in designing, developing and running relevant cell based assays to progress discovery programs. Significant advances continue to be made in assay design and cell supply processes that incorporate biologically relevant cell types and novel detection technologies. This symposium is designed to capture successful techniques and practices that enable high quality cell-based assays using commonly employed cell types such as CHO, HEK and U-2 OS, as well as the expanding application of additional cell types. The symposium will be of great interest to cell culture scientists, assay developers, screeners, medicinal chemists, ADMET and therapeutic teams.
Session Overviews:
Session 1: Cells as Reagents – Fact or Fiction?
This session will cover various aspects of the most important material used in cell-based assays: the cells. The talks will address the topics such as: how to characterize cell lines to ensure their identity? What are the impacts to the cells after transfection? What are the issues during scale up process? This session will also highlight advances in cell culture automation and material tracking system for cell-based assays.
Session 2: Assay Development – Present Realities
Topics covered include the application of BacMam virus based gene delivery in assay development, the development of high-content cellular assays, dielectric spectroscopy technology and photoprotein aqueorin based GPCR assay platforms and considerations in screening for antibody based therapeutics.
Session 3: Cell-Based Screening – The How, Why & Where
This session will include topics on the implementation of cell-based assays and screens across the discovery process focusing on the challenges, solutions and issues to consider. Presentations include experiences with high throughput screening for lead identification, profiling with cellular panels, ADME applications, and the use of high content screening in both drug discovery and to probe complex cellular systems.
Session 4: Cell-Based Assays – Emerging Trends
The topics in this session will address emerging trends in supply of cells that attempts to bridge the gap between traditional target based in vitro assays and in vivo measurements. The presentations will highlight potential applications of cells to build model systems that can offer the combined benefits of traditional in vitro and ex vivo approaches. These emerging technologies and methodologies hold the promise of addressing a major gap in using target based approaches to discover new biological tools and drugs and will challenge the supply of cell reagents.
http://www.sbsonline.com/
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