Released on: March 21, 2008, 11:44 am

Press Release Author: GTCbio

Industry: Biotech

Press Release Summary: Dr. Jeremy Caldwell, Executive Director of Molecular and Cell
Biology at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation will give the
Featured Presentation at GTCbio's 4th Assay Development & Screening Technologies
Conference, June 5-6, 2008 in San Francisco, CA. Dr. Caldwell will discuss broad
functional profiling of molecular libraries against biological space.

Press Release Body: Over the past ten years, advances in high throughput screening,
robotics, combinatorial chemistry and assay technology have set new standards in
drug discovery lead generation. Despite these capabilities, the failure rate of drug
candidates in the clinical and pre-clinical phase is still high, primarily due to
unexpected biological side-effects. Profiling of lead compounds across batteries of
biologically relevant assays could identify untoward side-effects early in
pre-clinical discovery but also beneficial properties such as alternative
indications, orphan target modulation, and new biology. Whole cell systems represent
an attractive milieu to perform profiling experiments since they encode all the
components involved in signaling pathways, however, no robust and systematic method
exists to opportunistically interrogate molecular function broadly in cellular
assays.
In seeking to address this problem, Dr. Caldwell and his group have developed an
approach, which affords rapid, cost-effective broad-based cell biological assay
profiling in parallel against molecular libraries. The group has engineered an
industrial scale automated compound profiling (ACP) system, which consists of an
automated tissue culture system for propagating cell-based assays integrated with a
system for automatically performing miniaturized assays in 384 or 1536-well
micro-plates. The ACP can rapidly test thousands of compounds, in replicates,
simultaneously in dose-response against 100s of unique cell-based assays in a single
experiment. While the ACP can be used to rank compounds from HTS campaigns, it can
also identify unwanted and desirable activities in pace with lead optimization,
identify small molecule ligands for orphan targets/diseases and even pre-qualify
chemical libraries by functional characterization, and by virtue of focusing on
cells, the ACP concept can be extended to other library types including peptides,
antibodies, secreted proteins, siRNAs, cDNAs, natural products and known drugs.

GTCbio\'s 3rd Assay Development and Screening Technologies conference will provide
attendees with critical information to utilize in the discovery and development of
assays, while keeping them informed about the latest screening technologies for both
high-throughput screening and high-content screening. Topics being covered include
cell based assays, high throughput screening, high content screening, in vitro
assays and screening, novel assay and screening technologies, and target validation.
For more information visit www.gtcbio.com.
ABOUT GTCbio
GTCbio organizes conferences specifically for the biomedical and biopharmaceutical
industries. Our goal is to facilitate the exchange of biopharmaceutical and
biomedical intelligence between industry leaders, academic and government
organizations, and the financial community.
GTCbio is a subsidiary of Global Technology Community, LLC, a privately held company
founded in 2002.


Web Site: http://www.gtcbio.com

Contact Details: Contact: GTCBIO (626) 256-6405, (626) 256-6460 fax,
nina.tran@gtcbio.com