Kinetics in Drug Discovery

Speaker: Martin Redhead (Group Lead, UCB Pharma), Catherine Wark (Applications Manager, BMG LABTECH Ltd.)

In drug discovery campaigns, the binding affinity of drug candidates to a target is usually analysed at equilibrium. This abstraction of a biological system bears some risks and is often poorly predictive of efficacy and potency in patients. This is mainly caused by the fact that complex living organisms such as human beings are non-equilibrium in nature.

Martin Redhead, group leader at UCB, is specialised in molecular pharmacology and its impact in drug discovery. In this scientific talk, he discusses the use and impact of kinetic binding methods across the drug discovery pipeline in order to get a better understanding of the pharmacology of drugs.

The study of binding kinetics can efficiently be performed on microplate readers. It neither relies on radioactivity nor requires expensive instrumentation or multiple reactions for individual time points. Additionally, the use of a microplate reader for kinetic binding assays extends the use of kinetic assays to screening purposes.

In this regard, Catherine Wark from BMG LABTECH will introduce the PHERAstar FSX, its features dedicated to binding kinetic assays, and the key elements for assay optimization.

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