The Biochemical and Biophysical Assay Development team specializes in biochemical and biophysical aspects of small molecule drug discovery. The team’s scientists are responsible for the design and implementation of biochemical assays to elucidate the mechanism of action (MOA) of small molecules across a broad range of therapeutic areas. These are applied in primary and secondary screens, lead identification, as well as supports lead optimization of a drug discovery project. The team also utilizes biophysical tools and develops biochemical assays that are also amenable for high throughput screening (HTS).
Our Capabilities
- We optimize large scale expression and purification methods to generate recombinant proteins in a homogenous and active state. The high purity proteins are used for HTS , FBDD, hit to lead and lead optimization phase of a project.
- State of the art instrumentation enables our researchers to develop robust end point and kinetic biochemical assays for multiple target classes. The detection methods include, Fluorescence (FP, FI, TR-FRET, ALPHA, LANCE), Luminescence (Luciferase), Absorbance (UV/VIS) and direct measurement using MS.
- We use our in-house biophysics platform (BiacoreT200 SPR and Auto-ITC200) for the determination of kinetic, affinity and thermodynamic binding parameters of small molecules, peptides and protein-protein interactions.
- We have significant experience in building disease-relevant cellular assays to support target validation and compound characterization. This has been implemented in targeted protein degradation, a new emerging modality.
- For our anti-bacterial drug discovery projects, we perform antimicrobial susceptibility testing (MIC, MBC determination), mode of action (cidal, static), time kill kinetics assay and antimicrobial drug-drug interactions (synergism, antagonism) for a range of model and pathogenic organisms.