In the world of drug discovery, it’s all about scale. Drug developers need to rapidly winnow massive compound libraries down to manageable hit lists, and the more easily and less expensively they can do that, the better.
Drug development tools run the gamut from high throughput screening systems to low-throughput patch clamp apparatuses, and each user’s needs are unique. Still, as you contemplate your needs, consider these variables:
Target. Obviously, this is the key question: What enzyme or process are you hoping to modulate? Popular drug discovery targets include GPCRs, ion channels and kinases, but there are others, and the systems you use to study them will vary. For instance, kinases are easy to study biochemically, whereas GPCRs and ion channels require dedicated cell lines expressing those proteins.
Throughput. How many compounds are you testing? The kinds of assays you can reasonably run are different if you’re working your way through a million-compound library than if you’re diving into, say, a few hundred hits. Patch clamping, for instance, is more amenable to lower throughput studies, whereas fluorescent assays looking at calcium mobilization are more scalable.
Readout. What readout are you looking for? Are you running a biochemical assay, looking for inhibition of a specific kinase? Or are you screening whole cells, say for changes in proliferation, viability or morphology? Will your assay be label-free (looking for changes in electrical properties, for instance) or use fluorescent dyes?
Location. If you plan to do the screening in-house, you’ll need equipment, money and expertise. Or you can outsource the work to a screening service and save both money (at least in terms of capital expenditures) and time.