A new review in SLAS Discovery explores how improved safety screening strategies and methods are improving the pharmaceutical discovery and development process. Terry R. Van Vleet et al. of AbbVie (Chicago, IL USA) outline several fundamental methods of the current drug screening processes and emerging techniques and technologies that promise to improve molecule selection. In addition, the authors discuss integrated screening strategies and provide examples of advanced screening paradigms.

Pharmaceutical discovery and development is a long and expensive process that, unfortunately, still results in a low success rate, with drug safety continuing to be a major impedance. Improved safety screening strategies and methods are needed to more effectively fill this critical gap. Recent advances in informatics are now making it possible to manage bigger data sets and integrate multiple sources of screening data in a manner that can potentially improve the selection of higher-quality drug candidates. Integrated screening paradigms have become the norm in pharma, both in discovery screening and in the identification of off-target toxicity mechanisms during later-stage development. Furthermore, advances in computational methods are making in silico screens more relevant and suggest that they may represent a feasible option for augmenting the current screening paradigm.

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“Screening Strategies and Methods for Better Off-Target Liability Prediction and Identification of Small-Molecule Pharmaceuticals” can be accessed for free for limited time at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2472555218799713.

A PDF of this article is available to credentialed media outlets upon request. Contact [email protected].

About our Society and Journals

SLAS (Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening) is an international community of nearly 20,000 professionals and students dedicated to life sciences discovery and technology. The SLAS mission is to bring together researchers in academia, industry and government to advance life sciences discovery and technology via education, knowledge exchange and global community building.

SLAS DISCOVERY: 2016 Impact Factor 2.355. Editor-in-Chief Robert M. Campbell, Ph.D., Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN (USA). SLAS Discovery (Advancing Life Sciences R&D) was previously published (1996-2016) as the Journal of Biomolecular Screening (JBS).

SLAS TECHNOLOGY: 2016 Impact Factor 2.632. Editor-in-Chief Edward Kai-Hua Chow, Ph.D., National University of Singapore (Singapore). SLAS Technology (Translating Life Sciences Innovation) was previously published (1996-2016) as the Journal of Laboratory Automation (JALA).

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