Biochemical Assays

Many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies today employ a vast array of technologies for assay development of particular targets.  Traditional techniques offer cheaper, commercially available alternatives to in-house assay development.  Popular techniques for biochemical assays include: FP (fluorescent polarization), FI (fluorescent intensity, TR-FRET (time resolved fluorescence), wavelength absorbance, ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), and radiometric methods.

While these methods offer quick, cost-effective results, there are inherent limitations to traditional assays.  Most of these assays are functional and rely on the inhibition or upregulation of a particular reaction.  For example, a certain assay for enzyme inhibition will require the drug compound in question prevent the phosphorylation of a substrate (kinase assay).  The resulting phosphorylation can be detected using FP method, radiometric assays, and others.  The key question remains that not all binding events of a compound to a target will result in functional inhibition.  Moreover, autofluorescent compounds can disrupt fluorescent detection systems and result in false positive hits.  Individual reactants may need to be modified or labeled with fluorescent tags, and such modifications can disrupt the native state.