Dictionary

Assay

An assay is a test procedure of a certain hypothesis in a drug discovery experiment.

Assay Development

Assay Development refers to the drug discovery process in which scientists assess various experimental methods and procedures on a particular biological assay, which the aim of either scaling up the assay to production high throughput screening, or developing a robust low to moderate throughput assay which is used as a complementary tool to verify ‘hits’ which are identified in high throughput screening.

Cellular Morphology

Cellular Morphology is the study of the form or shape of cells or part thereof.

Confocal Microscopy

Confocal Microscopy is a modification of fluorescence microscopy that optically sections a specimen, resulting in improved resolution and background discrimination. This is accomplished by using small (pinhole) apertures (which are confocal) to eliminate out-of-focus signal and background. A series of optical sections can be obtained automatically and either projected into a single image or a 3-D reconstruction can be produced.

High-content Screening

Drug candidates need to be assessed for their efficacy and toxicity by measuring their effects on cell shape and structure. High-content screening allows drug companies to automate the analysis of images of cells to measure subtle but important changes both rapidly and accurately.

High Throughput Screening

High-throughput screening, often abbreviated as HTS, is a method for scientific experimentation especially used in drug discovery. HTS combines rapid processing of biological assays with large compound inventories. The goal of this process is to identify compounds that modulate activity of the particular biological target in question. Compounds identified in this way are termed "hits". Retesting and further characterization of such hits can define lead molecules that with further optimization and applied discovery research result in the new chemical entities brought into the clinic for treatment of various disease states. Recent advances in instrumentation of various laboratory processes have enabled automation of these assays.

Histopathological slides

Histopathology is a field of pathology which specialices in the histological study of diseased tissue. It is an important tool of anatomical pathology and is used for accurate diagnosis of cancer and other diseases.

Neurite Outgrowth

Once neurons begin to aggregate into recognizable structures, and sometimes even before, they begin to extend elongated, membrane-enclosed protrusions of cytoplasm that are called ‘processes’ or ‘neurites’. These neurites grow toward other regions of the nervous system or other structures on which the neurons will eventually form synapses, such as glands, muscle, etc.