Artificial Intellengence in Drug Discovery

Artificial intelligence helps scientists in both steps of drug discovery, genesis of the targets as well as in design and screening aspects, say Kole P L, Girish Bende, Bhusari Sachin, Nagappa A N

The emergence of the human genome has opened new frontiers in the drug discovery process at molecular level as it ameliorate our understanding of genesis and progression of various diseases of self and acquired type. This has resulted in obtaining so-called ’molecular targets’ for drug design and discovery process. If such a molecular target is identified, the search for those molecules begins, which influence the target’s activity specifically and which are, therefore, considered to be the most potential and selective drugs against the disease. See the full story

Biolog Inc.

Roy Manns and Polyfiltronics were involved with Biolog Inc from the mid 1980’s. In this article, Barry Bochner, Chairman and CSO, Biolog Inc tells Lab-on-a-chip.com how Biolog came about and what the company is doing these days. See the full story

Protein 'Kiss of Death' Team Win Chemistry Nobel

Two Israelis and an American won the 2004 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work in the 1980s that could help treat illnesses like leukemia and cystic fibrosis. Research like this is done using microplates, and Millennium Pharmaceuticals is one of many Biopharma companies using 1000's of Microplates in their R&D programs. See the full story

ANSI Approves Microplate Standards Drafted by SBS Committee

New Universal Standards Expected to Accelerate & Streamline Industry

DANBURY, CT -- The Society for Biomolecular Screening (SBS)'s proposed four standards for the design of microplates used in drug discovery and other testing have been approved as universal industry standards by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Experts expect the new standards to result in more efficient, cost-effective early-stage drug discovery. See the full story

The Magic of Microplates

The chronological history of the development of microplates that can be found on this site has many examples of mistakes and many solutions to problems faced by Medicinal Chemists, Cell, Micro and Molecular Biologists and many Bio Pharma researchers.

The work of Dr. Takatsky in Hungary the PIONEER of Microplates has been well documented. Lets turn the clock forward to as recent as 1982 when Cleveland in San Diego took the 96 well Microplate and added Filter discs, thereby pionerring the "Filterplate". Then along came a researcher at NIH (National Institute of Health) whose need for a "filter bottom plate" was seen as a potential market by Millipore. This multi billion dollar company, by the way, owes its foundation to the "spoils of WW II". Filter paper technology for sewerage and beer was developed originally in Germany and after the war MIT was the base for the various technologies brought in from Germany and by chance a creative opportunist was their at the right time and right place, the rest is history. Learn more about Millipore by visiting thier website.

Millipore's Mistakes

Millipore's first Filterplate was a success in many ways, but then a researcher in Framingham had an accident as he used it for an assay it was not designed for and it started to leak between wells. By chance Manns was there in the lab in 1983 and got the blame because he had designed the plastics part of the product. Manns, then a consultant and contract R&D engineer, developed a solution for a "no cross talk " (i.e. no leakge between wells) microplate and took it to Millipore to try and make a few more bucks.

Millipore made the mistake of telling Manns that they already had a solution and thanks but no thanks. Manns went his merry way solving problems and developing plastics & filter devices on a contract basis with the "no cross talk" multiwell going on to become one of the best selling products (see next story). Filter Plates are now produced by several companies as this has opened up new methods in High Throughput Screening (HTS), Dru Discovery, Combinotrial Chemistry and Diagnostics tests including DNA fingerprinting

The Chicago Mistake

Manns was returning to Boston from an assignment in Chicago and forgot to set his watch back one hour and missed his plane, in what turned out to be a very good mistake. He was reading a paper to kill time before then next flight when he read about a new company called Pandex in Mundelein, Illinois where Manns had lived for 3+ years while at Baxter. Pandex had developed an instrument that used a lot of Filter Microplates and Manns called, hired a car and went straight to Mundelein. There he found Pandex needed a filterplate with no cross talk, the rest is again history.

Magic of Mulligan at Stanford

Professor John Mulligan happened to have connected with Manns in Boston and thought he might be pretty creative. Manns lived close to MIT and Harvard but little did Mulligan know Manns could not even pass the entrance exam to MIT even if he had had the money to try!

Mulligan was always coming up with new ideas for plates with filters and Manns obliged as he was fascinated by molecular biology and Mulligan's work with Yeast. John kept on saying "Roy try and put Glass Fiber media in Microplates". After several experiments they ran out of money trying to develop what would ultimately be called Unifilter™ the worlds first Glass Fiber Microplate.

Neumann a Researcher at Packard Instrument in Chicago connected up with Manns and was keen to have a Glass Fiber Filter bottom Microplate and they communicated for almost a year but neither of them had the money to travel to meet each other. One day Manns almost deleted Neumann and Packard from his computer records in order to make space as the computer at the time had a maximum memory capacity of 640KB and it was nearly full.

Manns made one last call to Neumann to apologize, and 2 days later Neumann, his boss Staff van Cauter and Dr. Al Kolb were in Boston to discuss the GF Microplate feasibility. Millipore had once again made the mistake of refusing Packard's request and thier next stop was Polyfiltronics and Manns. The rest is history...

What mistakes have you made?

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