Establishment of an Open Access Compound Management Facility in Australia to Stimulate Applied, Basic and Translational Biomedical Research

摘要

The paradigm for probing biological processes and drug discovery via small molecules has changed significantly over the past 10-15 years. The previous protocol in which 10s-100s of compounds were tested in animal models has been replaced by one where 100,000s-1,000,000s of compounds are routinely screened against a specific target or cellular assay. Big pharma, biotechs and the USA's publicly funded NIH1 all enjoy the combined benefits of automated compound storage and high throughput screening (HTS) to identify molecules that interact with proteins, receptors, DNA and RNA. One could view this relationship metaphorically as a marriage between chemistry through compound libraries and biology via HTS.