success-story

In recent years, increasing levels of resistance to the four FDA-approved anti-influenza virus drugs have been described and vaccine manufacturers have experienced demands that exceed their capacity. This situation underlines the urgent need for novel antivirals as well as innovations in vaccine production in preparation for the next influenza epidemic. Here we report the development […]

Epigenetic regulation of gene expression is essential in embryonic development and contributes to cancer pathology. We used a cell-based imaging assay that measures derepression of a silenced green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter to identify novel classes of compounds involved in epigenetic regulation. This locus derepression (LDR) assay was screened against a 69,137-member chemical library using […]

Non-coding CUG repeat expansions interfere with the activity of human Muscleblind-like (MBNL) proteins contributing to myotonic dystrophy 1 (DM1). To understand this toxic RNA gain-of-function mechanism we developed a Drosophila model expressing 60 pure and 480 interrupted CUG repeats in the context of a non-translatable RNA. These flies reproduced aspects of the DM1 pathology, most […]

High-throughput screening (HTS) of chemical libraries has become a critical tool in basic biology and drug discovery. However, its implementation and the adaptation of high-content assays to human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have been hampered by multiple technical challenges. Here we present a strategy to adapt hESCs to HTS conditions, resulting in an assay suitable […]

The screening of a commercially available library of compounds has proved a successful strategy for the identification of a lead compound in a drug discovery programme. Here, we analysed 880 off-patent drugs, which initially comprised the Prestwick Chemical library, as sources of bacterial endotoxin neutralizers. We identified 3,3′,5-triiodo-thyroacetic acid (tiratricol) as a non-antibacterial compound that […]

Escherichia coli YjeE is a broadly conserved bacterial ATPase of unknown function that has been widely characterized as essential. Here, the transcriptional regulation of the promoter of yjeE (P yjeE) was probed using a luciferase reporter and 172 antibiotics of diverse mechanisms. Norfloxacin and other fluorquinolones were found to be the most potent activator of […]

Alternative splicing of tau exon 10 produces tau isoforms with either 3 (3R) or 4 (4R) repeated microtubule-binding domains. Increased ratios of 4R to 3R tau expression, above the physiological 1:1, leads to neurofibrillary tangles and causes neurode-generative disease. An RNA stem loop structure plays a significant role in determining the ratio, with decreasing stability […]

This study describes a method for mining and modeling binding data obtained from a large panel of targets (in vitro safety pharmacology) to distinguish differences between promiscuous and selective compounds. Two naïve Bayes models for promiscuity and selectivity were generated and validated on a test set as well as publicly available drug databases. The model […]

Preclinical Safety Pharmacology (PSP) attempts to anticipate adverse drug reactions (ADRs) during early phases of drug discovery by testing compounds in simple, in vitro binding assays (that is, preclinical profiling). The selection of PSP targets is based largely on circumstantial evidence of their contribution to known clinical ADRs, inferred from findings in clinical trials, animal […]

The range of molecular properties of generally recognized as safe (GRAS) compounds that are typically used in food and beverage products is compared to marketed drugs. It is observed that GRAS compounds differ from marketed drugs with respect to several molecular descriptors, including molecular weight, H-bond acceptor count, H-bond donor count, aromatic ring count, basic […]