Drug discovery and development are increasingly focusing on in vitro (laboratory-based) screening assays and in silico (computer-based) predictive screening tools, which emphasise ever-increasing ranges of receptor subtype assays.
Many of these assays use human source material, which helps researchers and scientists gain a more clinically relevant understanding of drug side effect liabilities and toxicity issues
The new panel, General Side Effect II (GEN SEP II), is an evolution from NovaScreen's original general side effect profile panel and aims to side effects across a broad range of therapeutic areas including immunology, cancer, inflammation, pain, gastrointestinal, metabolic, neurological and cardiovascular.
"The panel was designed to include assays that specifically address emerging drug approval requirements," said Peter Carlson, vice president of NovaScreen.
"As an example, NovaScreen includes the hERG channel assay, an indicator of cardiovascular toxicity, in the GEN SEP II panel. Cardiovascular side effects are currently a huge concern in the drug development business, and identifying these issues as early as possible helps pharmaceutical companies avoid costly late-stage drug failures."
NovaScreen also offers a Side Effect Database (SED) that can be used in conjunction with GEN SEP II.
The SED enables customers to compare GEN SEP II results with a database of more than 2,300 compounds including marketed, failed, withdrawn, and over-the-counter drugs that have been screened through 65 ligand-binding and enzyme assays.
The SED provides detailed chemical and biological activity pattern information to aid the identification and elimination of side effect and safety concerns.
"In today's discovery environment, gearing drug development efforts towards more clinically relevant experimentation is critical. Employing human receptor assays that cover a broad therapeutic range is one way to accomplish this," added Carlson.
NovaScreen have become prominent in the field of pharmacoinformatics, which concentrates on the aspects of bioinformatics dealing with drug discovery. It has various applications in research in medicine, biotechnology, agriculture etc.