Compound Management
Technology innovation will help prepare drug discovery for smart screening era
Drug discovery is undergoing a transformation powered by advances that provide more knowledge from biological assays, allow for screening orders of magnitude more molecules and enable smarter selection of compounds.
W
e are on the cusp of having previously unimaginable amounts of information about each target and many more tar- gets to prosecute. For instance, last year AstraZeneca launched an integrated genomics ini- tiative through which scientists will investigate data from as many as two million human genomes, including more than 500,000 from clinical trials run by the company1.
This possibility of being able to interrogate many more targets, and learning more about the features that drive compound identification and optimisation, is a major step towards the ability to intelligently select compounds to screen in drug projects. The diversity screening commonly per- formed in pharma workflows today – those all-by- all screens, necessitated by our lack of knowledge about targets and compounds alike – could and should be replaced by smart screening of targets with just the compounds deemed the most promis- ing fits by strong scientific evidence. This would allow researchers to be more judicious about the use of samples, rather than wasting a proportion of each compound for every new screen, despite the low likelihood of most being effective.
Drug Discovery World Winter 2017/18
Smarter screening approaches would ease the pressure on compound libraries in pharma, biotech and academia2. Currently, the ‘broad brush’ method of screening requires having large volumes of compound samples on hand at all times; these samples often have to be shuttled between lab facil- ities, sometimes around the globe. Each diversity screen chips away at the volume remaining in the library, raising concerns that precious samples will be exhausted in routine screening and then unavailable when truly needed.
Innovative automation can help alleviate this challenge and preserve compounds for the coming era of smart screening. At AstraZeneca, a collabo- ration with several vendors in compound storage and processing is allowing us to rethink our com- pound library usage and approach. By pushing the boundaries for automation, labware and software, we have made it possible to extract more value from each compound in readiness for an increase in new targets. This approach could serve as a tem- plate for other organisations looking to extend their own capabilities. We recognise the need for innova- tive automation solutions across many areas of drug discovery, and collaborations with academia
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By Dr Clive Green and Dr Philip Spencer
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