What is Screening?
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One of the most efficient methods of discovering new bioactive small molecules is through the screening of large diverse chemical libraries to identify small molecules that are capable of modifying the behaviour of a target protein or a cellular phenotype.
Screening chemical small molecules that impede the function of specific target proteins is now a widely used platform for therapeutic drug discovery but via the nascent field of chemical biology it also becoming acknowledged as a powerful tool for identifying new proteins and mapping new biochemical pathways in the context of functional assays.
HTCS is an enabling technology for spanning the interface between biology and chemistry and involves the test ing of several hundred thousand compounds against a single target or cell line using a high capacity assay.
The core components of a HTCS group (PDF (5.38mb) are:
- a chemical library (PDF 958kb)
- a storage facility for the chemical library (PDF 245kb)
- high throughput plate readers (PDF 800kb)
- data management systems (PDF 222kb)
- knowledge and expertise
- automated liquid handling systems (play flash movie below)
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