Bromley,
High throughput screening is what I do, but the projects I work on are cancer related. We also combine virtual screening with the experimental HTS so we can use computer models of the enzyme and dock computer versions of the small molecules in the active site of the enzyme. This allows us to reduce the number of small molecules we actually screen, cutting down on the time and cost. Also, when we get a promising small molecule from experimental screening on the robots, we can use the computer models to see how it probably docks in the active site and then our chemists can figure how to make modified molecules like it that will dock even better. Trying to find better inhibitors. We don't screen 200,000 compounds a day, that's not a very refined approach and costly. we use the virtual screening to reduce the number of compounds and then do cherry picking to test a small subset of the compounds on the robots.
One of the projects I am working on, although targeting cancer, relates to the theory I have been developing on autoimmune diseases, since it is the same enzymes involved. So I am able to do research on cancer that hopefully can be carried over into autoimmune therapeutics, if my theory is right. If I find a good compound I can go as far as testing it in cells (does it get into the cells? does it actually get to the targeted enzyme? does it affect the cells? etc.) but I will have to get a collaboration going with someone to test the compounds in an autoimmune context, such as mouse models since I am only supposed to be working on cancer. It is really interesting work and lets me get involved in a lot of different projects targeting different types of cancers (and...autoimmune diseases
).
Wesley
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