Assay Development and Translation

Any biochemical assay can be proposed by Dutch life science researchers to the screening selection committee. Typically such assays perform well on the bench in the lab but fine-tuning of assay details is normally required to make assays, either cell-based or with in vitro reconstituted components, suitable for high throughput or phenotypic screening. The LUMC and PPSC have a vast experience with assay translation for screening and will assist potential users with this important aspect in order to be able to proceed to a small molecule screen, first of limited size at the LUMC and then, if desired with a 200,000 small molecule collection or a 33,000-membered focused library.

The LUMC has a dedicated manned protein facility that assists with protein production and purification as well as biophysical protein characterization. Dedicated personnel will advise clients on selection of targets and production of domains. In addition, for particular proteins, the substrates that allow for a uHTS suitable read-out may not be available. In those cases NL-OPENSCREEN will assist in the development of the required assay reagents.

Partners within the NL-OPENSCREEN with expertise in the respective class of compounds will then be approached for the design and synthesis of such structures that are essential for a successful screen. This step is critical for good screens and NL-OPENSCREEN will put emphasis on the design and generation of high quality screens.