Advances in Antimicrobial Drug Discovery Through Microarray-Supported Assay Development
Today, a team of scientists from Genedata and Bayer HealthCare publish in the January issue of Genome Research a novel technology that is expected to significantly accelerate the hunt for novel antimicrobial drug candidates. They report on the successful application of a microarray-based process that guides the development of robust, pathway-specific assays for high-throughput screening of compound libraries. Based on Genedata's sophisticated computational methods they have analyzed large-scale gene expression experiments to pinpoint antibiotic-responsive promoters that respond in a highly compound mechanism specific manner. Using this technique, a fatty acid biosynthesis pathway-specific reporter assay was constructed that is based on a novel stress-inducible promoter. In a proof-of-principle experiment, this assay was shown to enable screening for new small-molecule inhibitors of bacterial growth.
Key advantages of this newly developed assay technology are its scalability and extendibility. The published technology can be readily applied to other antimicrobial target areas, including difficult-to-screen targets. The required computational algorithms and workflows are implemented in Genedata's Phylosopher and Expressionist systems, and are accessible to Genedata's collaboration partners through licensing agreements.
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