Radical Change in Research and Development:The Shift from Conventional Methods to High Throughput Methods

摘要

As high throughput methodologies have revolutionized the process of drug discovery,now high throughput methods have the potential to revolutionize the research and development process in broader technology and product areas.To anyone working on complex formulated products the ability to significantly accelerate the formulation and testing cycle is highly attractive and it is clear that adopting these methods will result in a significant competitive advantage.However,applying the high throughput philosophy and then developing the methods to carry it out are not trivial.First,a number of mindset changes are required.A single experiment now consists of multiple compositions or formulations;good experimental design becomes crucial in order to generate useful data.Understanding the limitations and compromises involved in screening are important as is identifying those steps in the process development cycle that will result in the largest impact if high throughput methods are adopted.Next,methods and techniques to enable high throughput materials preparation and screening are required.These can range from a very simple adaptation of current techniques to fully automated systems costing millions of dollars.The ultimate goal is to accelerate the research and development process by one or two orders of magnitude.This acceleration can result in products with unique performance properties,products that are more robust,and also provide the scientist with a deeper understanding of the parameters that affect performance.