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High dimensional flow cytometry comes of age

3 September 2012 | By Jonni Moore, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Director, Clinical Flow Cytometry, Hospital of University of Pennsylvania, Director, Abramson Cancer Center Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting Shared Resource – Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania and Pascal Yvon, CEO, CytoVas

Technologies for single cell analysis have recently become prominent in the emerging life science sectors. The last few decades have seen an explosion in advancements in cytometric technologies encompassing instrumentation, probes and data analysis. In particular, flow cytometry has become a well-established and routine method in clinical laboratories. Recent developments…

Physiologicaly based pharmacokinetic modelling of transporters in drug discovery and development

3 September 2012 | By Pradeep Sharma and Katherine Fenner, Global DMPK, AstraZeneca R&D

Physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models describe the different compartments (tissues) in the body linked via arterial and venous blood flow (Figure 1). The volume of each tissue and blood flows are available from literature data1-5 and PBPK models have been developed for many species including rat, mouse, dog, pig and…

G protein coupled receptors – exploiting flexible conformations

3 September 2012 | By Kathryn L. Chapman, Imperial Drug Discovery Centre, Imperial College London and John B.C. Findlay & Gemma K. Kinsella, Department of Biology, National University of Ireland Maynooth

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are a diverse super-family of proteins located within the plasma membrane of eukaryotic cells which have a common architecture consisting of seven-transmembrane (7-TM) segments, connected by extracellular (ECL) and intracellular (ICL) loops. They differ from other 7-TM proteins in their ability to activate guanine-nucleotide binding proteins…

Ensuring patient safety during clinical trials; translation to preclinical drug discovery

3 September 2012 | By David Cook & James Milligan, AstraZeneca

Ensuring patient safety during clinical trials is of paramount consideration with stringent monitoring built into trials (and beyond) and the design and interpretation of safety outcomes subject to a large amount of regulation. As a result, it is rare for clinical trials to produce extreme adverse drug reactions but it…

Integrating preclinical data into early clinical development

3 September 2012 | By Vikash Sinha, Clinical Pharmacology Leader, Janssen Research and Development

One of the important goals in preclinical and early clinical drug development is to reduce attrition rates and to improve our ability to pick winners and drop potential loser drug candidates. By being able to efficiently translate preclinical data and observations into possible clinical outcomes, one can make the drug…

Under the microscope: Graeme Lowe, Catalent

3 September 2012 | By Helen Bahia, Editor, European Pharmaceutical Review

Graeme Lowe, Director of Development and Analytical Solutions at Catalent, discusses outsourcing pharmaceutical development and analytical solutions.

A reduction to practise for siRNA screening utilising high conent analysis (HCA) technologies

10 July 2012 | By Anthony Mitchell Davies & Anne Marie Byrne, Department of Clinical Medicine Trinity College Dublin; Holger Erfle, BIOQUANT-Zentrum Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; Graham Donnelly, Rita Murray & Peadar MacGabhann, Biocroi Ltd

One of the major limitations of performing large-scale High Content Analysis (HCA) screens is reagent cost, indeed this fact has been a key driver in the development of assay size reduction strategies here at The Irish National Centre for High Content Screening and Analysis at Trinity College’s Department of Medicine.…

Evolution of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics in drug discovery and development

10 July 2012 | By Dr. Dermot McGinnity, Innovative Medicines, AstraZeneca R&D

Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK) is a scientific discipline once primarily associated with safety evaluation in drug development that has, in the last two decades, become a core discipline within drug discovery, development and even post-marketing. Approximately 20 years ago, sub-optimal DMPK properties were recognised as a contributor to the…

Breaking old habits: Moving away from commonly used buffers in pharmaceuticals

10 July 2012 | By David Sek, Research Scientist, Pfizer

One of the key factors in stabilising proteins is determining the optimal pH and buffer system to provide adequate solubility and stability. Currently, three buffers, citrate, phosphate and acetate, make up the majority of buffers used in parenteral pharmaceuticals approved by the FDA, but less precedented excipients are certainly available…

Applications of thermally stimulated current spectroscopy in pharmaceutical research

10 July 2012 | By Milan Antonijević, School of Science, University of Greenwich

Thermally Stimulated Current Spectroscopy (TSC) is a new tool that can be used to analyse pharmaceutically important molecules. TSC studies are usually conducted to provide additional information about molecular mobility in the solid state, and as a result characterise phase transitions that are related to thermal transitions in the crystalline…

Discovery and validation of protein biomarkers

10 July 2012 | By Péter Horvatovich & Rainer Bischoff, Analytical Biochemistry, Department of Pharmacy, University of Groningen

Biomarkers are biological characteristics that are objectively measured and evaluated as indicators of normal biological processes, pathogenic processes or pharmacological responses to a therapeutic intervention. Biomarkers can be used to determine disease onset, progression, efficacy of drug treatment, patient susceptibility to develop a certain type of disease or predict efficacy…

Ten years of siRNA – a clinical overview

10 July 2012 | By Katharina Bruno, Principal Scientist, Technical Research & Development (TRD), Novartis Pharma AG

In 2001, small interfering RNA (siRNA) was discovered as the mediator of RNA interference (RNAi), a transient and specific repression mechanism of protein expression1. After the pharmaceutical industry became aware of the intrinsic versatility and potential of this molecule, a race to develop the first siRNA based drug began. However,…

Rapid sterility testing and the impact of recent changes to the US Code of Federal Regulations

10 July 2012 | By Michael J. Miller, President, Microbiology Consultants, LLC

This is the third paper in our continuing series on Rapid Microbiological Methods (RMM) that will appear in European Pharmaceutical Review during 2012. Rapid sterility testing is one of a number of applications that novel microbiological technologies afford the pharmaceutical industry. RMM technologies have already been validated and implemented for…

The need for proteomic-based biomarkers in the drug development pipeline

10 July 2012 | By Paul C. Guest, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge and Sabine Bahn Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge & Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus Medical Centre

Pharmaceutical companies are under increasing pressure to improve their efficiency and returns on drug discovery projects. This is a daunting task considering that the average drug costs approximately one billion US dollars to develop and takes around 12 years from initial discovery to reach the market1. In addition, approximately 70…