Biochemical, Biophysical & Cellular Assay Development

Exceptional credentials across target classes, and a track record of successfully prosecuting challenging targets

Introduction

Our Biosciences team is uniquely experienced in de novo development and optimisation of biochemical, biophysical and cellular assays.

Leveraging our extensive range of equipment, we can rapidly develop sensitive and robust assays for hit identification, mechanistic profiling and to support medicinal chemistry programmes across all major target classes, including more novel and challenging examples.

Our in-depth biochemical and biophysical knowledge allows us to develop a profound understanding of the nature of the interactions and to characterise the target-ligand binding, maximising your probability of success.

Assay development case studies

Since 2013, we have established more than 150 biochemical, biophysical and cellular assays, supporting medicinal chemistry programmes across all major target classes, including novel and challenging targets.

SCREENING TRIAGE CASE STUDIES

As part of our assay development/validation process we have developed a set of compounds known to cause interference in assays, so called PAINS activity, that can cause false positive results during screening (e.g. aggregators, redox cyclers, chelators etc.). We use these compounds during assay development to identify potential liabilities and can then either optimise the assay to minimise these ‘false positive’ effects, or in cases where these effects cannot be eliminated, we can put in place appropriate de-selection assays to quickly triage such compounds. 

Target Class Expertise

Our experience of assay development spans all major target classes:

Enzymes

Hydrolases, proteases (including serine, cysteine proteases), kinases (including protein, sugar kinases), phosphodiesterases, ligases, polymerases, helicases, nucleases, demethylases, deacetylases, methyltransferase, decarboxylases, dehydrogenases, oxygenases, reductases

GPCRs
Ion channels

Voltage and ligand-gated

Nuclear receptors
Protein-protein, protein-RNA & protein-DNA interactions
Others

Including splicing factors, chaperones, transporters

Capabilities and Techniques

All common screening modalities

Absorbance, luminescence, fluorescence, FP, HTRF, TR-FRET, Alphascreen

FLIPR Penta

High-throughput cellular screening system

Dynamic Mass Redistribution

Corning Epic®

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Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)

Biacore 8k

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Thermal Shift/Differential Scanning Fluorimetry
Microscale Thermophoresis

Monolith NT.Automated

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3D Cell Culture and Imaging
Development of recombinant cell lines
Integrated HTS platform

with acoustic dispensing capable of screening >150 plates per day

Roylan Development StoragePod®

maintaining and drying plates in dry/low O2 atmosphere

Secure Data Analysis

software tools for secure Data Analysis in an industry standard, secure database

Licence to test controlled/scheduled substances

Our Experts

Director of Biosciences

Dr Stuart McElroy

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Associate Director Biosciences

Dr Brian McFerran

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Publications

Posters & case studies

Integrated Drug Discovery


Science-led drug discovery

Get in Touch

Let's talk about how we can maximise your drug discovery success.

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