化合物药物活性的高通量筛选

介绍高通量药物筛选系统的组成及其相关技术。结合国家药物筛选中心的工作,详细介绍了化合物药物活性的高通量筛选的４ 个组成部分及其在药物发现过程中的作用。高通量药物筛选系统是一个涉及多个学科的、以分子生物学、新型检测技术技术为基础的新型药物发现系统。高通量药物筛选系统的顺利开展可以加速我国的新药研究     

极化荧光在高通量药物筛选中的应用

1　前言基于荧光技术的检测分析方法是近年来被应用于药物高通量筛选 (high throughputscreening,HTS)的重要方法之一,荧光检测方法具有灵敏度高、方法简便的优点,目前应用于HTS的荧光技术包括均相时间分辨荧光分析法 (homogeneoustimeresolvedfluorescence,HTRF),荧光共振能量     

An update on the advancing high-throughput screening techniques for patch clamp-based ion channel screens: implications for drug discovery

Introduction: Automated patch clamp (APC) devices have become commonplace in many industrial and academic labs. Their ease-of-use and flexibility have ensured that users can perform routine screening experiments and complex kinetic experiments on the same device without the need for months of training and experience. APC devices are being developed to increase throughput and flexibility.

Areas covered: Experimental options such as temperature control, internal solution exchange and current clamp have been available on some APC devices for some time, and are being introduced on other devices. A comprehensive review of the literature pertaining to these features for the Patchliner, QPatch and Qube and data for these features for the SyncroPatch 384/768PE, is given. In addition, novel features such as dynamic clamp on the Patchliner and light stimulation of action potentials using channelrhodosin-2 is discussed.

Expert opinion: APC devices will continue to play an important role in drug discovery. The instruments will be continually developed to meet the needs of HTS laboratories and for basic research. The use of stem cells and recordings in current clamp mode will increase, as will the development of complex add-ons such as dynamic clamp and optical stimulation on high throughput devices.     

高内涵药物筛选方法的研究及应用

高通量药物筛选 (high throughputscreening,HTS)是 20世纪 80年代中期产生的为寻找先导物针对大量样品进行药理活性评价分析的一种技术手段,在创新药物的研究和开发中发挥了重要作用。本室于 1998年在国内率先将其用于创新药物的研究,已发现一批具有潜在研究价值的化合物 [1, 2]。近年来在药物发现领域又出现了一个新概念———高内涵药物筛选 (high contentscreening,HCS)。本文就高内涵药物筛选目前的研究和应用情况作一讨论。1　高通量药物筛选与高内涵药物筛选高通量药物筛选是以药物发现的基本规律为基础,应用药理学、生物化学…     

Establishment of a high-throughput screening system for caspase-3 inhibitors

In most tissues, apoptosis plays a pivotal role in normal development and for regulating cell number, thus inappropriate apoptosis underlies a variety of diseases. Caspase-3 is one of a family of caspases that are mainly involved in the apoptotic signal transduction pathway, where caspase-3 acts as an effect molecule to proteolytically cleave intracellular substrates that are necessary for maintaining cell survival. Recent evidences show that apoptotic cell death can be blocked by inhibiting caspase-3, suggesting its inhibitors have potential to be therapeutic drugs for the diseases related with inappropriate apoptosis. We have established a screening system to search caspase-3 inhibitors from chemical libraries stocked in our institute. The enzyme assay is configured entirely in 96-well format, which is easily adapted for high throughput screening. Before performing mass screening, 80 in-house compounds were screened as a preliminary experiment, and we found that morin hydrate inhibited caspase-3 by 66.4% at the final concentration of 20 microM.     

Fluorescence polarization assays in small molecule screening

Importance of the field: Fluorescence polarization (FP) is a homogeneous method that allows rapid and quantitative analysis of diverse molecular interactions and enzyme activities. This technique has been widely utilized in clinical and biomedical settings, including the diagnosis of certain diseases and monitoring therapeutic drug levels in body fluids. Recent developments in the field have been symbolized by the facile adoption of FP in high-throughput screening and small molecule drug discovery of an increasing range of target classes.

Areas covered in this review: The article provides a brief overview of the theoretical foundation of FP, followed by updates on recent advancements in its application for various drug target classes, including GPCRs, enzymes and protein–protein interactions. The strengths and weaknesses of this method, practical considerations in assay design, novel applications and future directions are also discussed.

What the reader will gain: The reader is informed of the most recent advancements and future directions of FP application to small molecule screening.

Take home message: In addition to its continued utilization in high-throughput screening, FP has expanded into new disease and target areas and has been marked by increased use of labeled small molecule ligands for receptor-binding studies.     

Future challenges with DNA-encoded chemical libraries in the drug discovery domain

ABSTRACT

Introduction: DNA-encoded chemical libraries (DELs) have come of age and emerged to become a powerful technology platform for ligand discovery in biomedical research and drug discovery. Today, DELs have been widely adopted in the pharmaceutical industry and employed in drug discovery programs worldwide. DELs are capable of interrogating drug targets with an extremely large number of compounds highly efficiently.

Area covered: In this review, the authors introduce the history of DELs and provide an overview of the major technological components, including encoding methods, library synthesis, chemistry, selection methods, hit deconvolution strategy, and post-selection data analysis. A brief update on the hit compounds recently discovered from DEL selections against drug targets is also provided. Finally, the authors discuss their views on the present challenges and future directions for the development and application of DELs in drug discovery.

Expert opinion: DELs have provided great opportunities for lead compound discovery at an unprecedented scale and efficiency in drug discovery. The key to the future success of DELs as true discovery modalities, rather than just ‘a way to make many compounds,’ is to go beyond physical binding to functional or even phenotypic assays with the capability to probe the biological system.     

Computational analysis of high-throughput flow cytometry data

Introduction: Flow cytometry has been around for over 40 years, but only recently has the opportunity arisen to move into the high-throughput domain. The technology is now available and is highly competitive with imaging tools under the right conditions. Flow cytometry has, however, been a technology that has focused on its unique ability to study single cells and appropriate analytical tools are readily available to handle this traditional role of the technology.

Areas covered: Expansion of flow cytometry to a high-throughput (HT) and high-content technology requires both advances in hardware and analytical tools. The historical perspective of flow cytometry operation as well as how the field has changed and what the key changes have been discussed. The authors provide a background and compelling arguments for moving toward HT flow, where there are many innovative opportunities. With alternative approaches now available for flow cytometry, there will be a considerable number of new applications. These opportunities show strong capability for drug screening and functional studies with cells in suspension.

Expert opinion: There is no doubt that HT flow is a rich technology awaiting acceptance by the pharmaceutical community. It can provide a powerful phenotypic analytical toolset that has the capacity to change many current approaches to HT screening. The previous restrictions on the technology, based on its reduced capacity for sample throughput, are no longer a major issue. Overcoming this barrier has transformed a mature technology into one that can focus on systems biology questions not previously considered possible.     

DrugRep: an automatic virtual screening server for drug repurposing

Computationally identifying new targets for existing drugs has drawn much attention in drug repurposing due to its advantages over de novo drugs, including low risk, low costs, and rapid pace. To facilitate the drug repurposing computation, we constructed an automated and parameter-free virtual screening server, namely DrugRep, which performed molecular 3D structure construction, binding pocket prediction, docking, similarity comparison and binding affinity screening in a fully automatic manner. DrugRep repurposed drugs not only by receptor-based screening but also by ligand-based screening. The former automatically detected possible binding pockets of the receptor with our cavity detection approach, and then performed batch docking over drugs with a widespread docking program, AutoDock Vina. The latter explored drugs using seven well-established similarity measuring tools, including our recently developed ligand-similarity-based methods LigMate and FitDock. DrugRep utilized easy-to-use graphic interfaces for the user operation, and offered interactive predictions with state-of-the-art accuracy. We expect that this freely available online drug repurposing tool could be beneficial to the drug discovery community. The web site is http://cao.labshare.cn/drugrep/.     

作用于gp41的HIV融合抑制剂高通量筛选方法的研究

目的　对作用于gp4 1的HIV融合抑制剂筛选方法进行研究和改进 ,使其成为更加简便的高通量药物筛选模型。方法　采用夹心ELISA方法 ,检测HIVgp4 1六股α 螺旋束的形成。结果　以特异性识别HIVgp4 1六股α 螺旋束的单克隆和多克隆抗体为基础建立的改良夹心ELISA方法 ,特异性好 ,准确性高 ,更为简便和经济 ,能稳定有效地检测样品对 gp4 1六股α 螺旋束形成的抑制作用。 结论　本研究建立的改良方法可作为高通量药物筛选方法 ,用于从中草药库、噬菌体肽库和微生物发酵液等复杂组分样品中筛选作用于 gp4 1的HIV融合抑制剂 ,以研究开发抗HIV药物     

药物高通量筛选的设计与实施

本文在简要介绍药物高通量筛选体系的基础上,就组建高效能的高通量筛选体系需要关注的因素,如作用靶点、测试方法、检测方法与作用靶点的匹配、关键参数、效能评价等进行了重点阐述,为高通量筛选体系的设计和实施提供了有益的借鉴。     

药物筛选技术的最新进展--高内涵筛选

化合物活性筛选是创新药物研究过程的起点和具有决定意义的关键步骤。基于细胞的高内涵药物筛选技术实现了对化合物多靶点多参数的同时检测，代表着创新药物研究技术发展的必然趋势，将在未来的新药研发过程中发挥重要作用。笔者介绍了高内涵筛选技术的概念、系统组成，分析了其优势特点，并简要讨论了其在新药研究尤其是抗肿瘤药物研究中的实际应用。     

Novel approaches to glioma drug design and drug screening

Introduction: Gliomas are considered the most malignant form of brain tumors, and ranked among the most aggressive human cancers. Despite advance standard therapy the prognosis for patients with gliomas remains poor. Chemotherapy has played an important role as an adjuvant in treating gliomas. The efficacy of the chemotherapeutic drug is limited due to poor drug delivery and the inherent chemo- and radio-resistance. Challenges of the brain cancer therapy in clinical settings are; i) to overcome the chemo- and radio-resistance, ii) to improve drug delivery to tumors and iii) the development of effective drug screening procedures.

Areas covered: In this review, the authors discuss clinically important chemotherapeutic agents used for treating malignant gliomas along with novel drug design approaches. The authors, furthermore, discuss the in vitro and in vivo drug screening procedures for the development of novel drug candidates.

Expert opinion: The development of novel and highly potent chemotherapeutic agents for both glioma and glioma stem cells (GSCs) is highly important for future brain cancer research. Thus, research efforts should be directed towards developing innovative molecularly targeted antiglioma agents in order to reduce the toxicity and drug resistance which are associated with current forms of therapy. Development of novel pre-clinical drug screening procedures is also very critical for the overall success of brain cancer therapies in clinical settings.     

In silico screening strategies for novel inhibitors of parasitic diseases

Introduction: Parasitic diseases are a major global problem causing long-term disability and death, with severe medical and psychological consequences around the world. Despite the prevalence of parasitic disease, the treatment options for many of these illnesses are still inadequate and there is a dire need for new antiparasitic drugs. In silico screening techniques, which are powerful strategies for hit generation, are widely being applied in the design of new ligands for parasitic diseases.

Areas covered: This article analyses the application of ligand- and structure-based virtual screening strategies against a variety of parasitic diseases and discusses the benefits of the integration between computational and experimental approaches toward the discovery of new antiparasitic agents. The analysis is illustrated by recent examples, with emphasis on the strategies reported within the past 2 years.

Expert opinion: Virtual screening techniques are powerful tools commonly used in drug discovery against parasitic diseases, which have provided new opportunities for the identification of several novel compound classes with antiparasitic activity.     

Establishment of a novel cell-based assay for screening small molecule antagonists of human interleukin-6 receptor

Aim:

Blockade of interleukin-6 (IL-6) or its receptor (IL-6R) is effective in preventing the progression of autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. In the present study, we established a novel cell-based assay for identifying small molecule IL-6R antagonists.

Methods:

HEK293A cells were transfected with recombinant plasmids pTaglite-SNAP-IL6R and pABhFc-IL6 to obtain membrane-bound IL-6R and recombinant human IL-6 coupled with human Fc fragment (rhIL-6), respectively. A novel screening assay based on the interaction between IL-6R and rhIL-6 was established, optimized and validated. The stability of the assay was also assessed by calculating the Z′-factor.

Results:

RhIL-6 dose-dependently bound to IL-6R expressed at HEK293A cell surface. The IC₅₀ value of the known antagonist ab47215 was 0.38±0.08 μg/mL, which was consistent with that obtained using the traditional method (0.36±0.14 μg/mL). The value of Z′-factor was 0.68, suggesting that the novel assay was stable for high throughput screening. A total of 474 compounds were screened using the novel screening assay, and 3 compounds exhibited antagonistic activities (IC₅₀=8.73±0.28, 32.32±9.08, 57.83±4.24 μg/mL). Furthermore, the active compounds dose-dependently inhibited IL-6-induced proliferation of 7TD1 cells, and reduced IL-6-induced STAT3 phosphorylation in U937 cells.

Conclusion:

A novel cell-based screening assay for identifying small molecule IL-6R antagonists was established, which simplifies the procedures in traditional cellular ELISA screening and profiling and reduces the costs.     

Combinatorial design of biomaterials for drug delivery: opportunities and challenges

Background: The rational design of biodegradable polymeric devices for controlled drug delivery and tissue engineering is an important area of research for advancing new therapies for cancer, diabetes and immune-related disorders. In an era of escalating costs for discovery-based research, there is an urgent need to develop new and rapid methods to design drug delivery systems. Objective/methods: By merging this field of study with rapid and high throughput methods of design, optimization and development, researchers have been able to accelerate the discovery and design processes for these devices. Combinatorial research enables the rapid identification of key regions of interest. Conclusion: This review focuses on the opportunities and challenges in the area of combinatorial biomaterials design for drug delivery, as there has been a great deal of significant progress over the past decade to propel this approach for the rational design of biomaterials.