High throughput screening

Abstract

How are new drugs discovered? The common image is of dedicated teams of brilliant scientists unlocking the secrets of disease through years of research then designing wonder drugs based on their discoveries. Although this image is largely true in terms of the dedication, time and talent involved, there is also a very systematic process for turning research findings into pharmaceutical products. All pharmaceutical companies employ robotic systems to test millions of chemicals each year to see if any hold promise as drugs. This is all part of a complex process of establishing efficacy and safety using in vitro assays before these drug leads are tested in vivo. From here, you have a chance of creating a drug-if you are lucky-because the actual success rate from animal efficacy to an approved drug is less than 1 in 250 (1). In fact, the development of a new pharmaceutical product takes an average of 15 yr and costs in excess of 800,000,000 (2,3). Despite continued technological advancement and increasingly sophisticated biological methods, both times and costs have continually increased over the last two decades (1,4). In response to continued pressures to produce more drugs and do it faster and cheaper, the pharmaceutical industry has evolved specialized techniques that use industrialized processes borrowed from other industries and applied them to laboratory research. High Throughput Screening (HTS) is one such process. © 2008 Humana Press.