Drug Screening

The process of finding a new drug against a chosen target for a particular disease involves screening large libraries of chemicals for their ability to modify a target. Screening also helps in the evaluation of compound selectivity for chosen targets.

The Centre for Drug Research and Development's Drug Screening Division develops in-vitro and cell-based assays suitable for medium- to high-throughput drug screening. CDRD has liquid-handling robots and a suite of automation-friendly instruments for the detection of biological or biochemical activity. Libraries of defined pure chemicals from fundamental discovery efforts and combinatorial chemistry, along with peptides and natural product extracts, are available for screening to ensure sampling of a wide diversity of compounds for potential drug activity.

The chemicals identified as "hits" against individual targets serve as useful tools to study biological processes and human diseases and as lead compounds for drug development.

Capabilities and Resources

The Centre for Drug Research and Development’s Drug Screening Division helps investigators design and analyze high-throughput and high-content screening assays.

High Throughput ScreeningHigh-Content ScreeningLibraries
  • Assay development
    • All cell-type-based screens
    • Biochemical screens
    • Kinetic or endpoint
  • All possible read modes
  • Automation
  • Assay development
    • Live cell assays
    • End-point assays
  • Analysis
    • 4-fluorophore detection
    • Bright-field analysis
    • Multiplex acquisition
    • Web-based data repository
  • 30,000 CCBN Collection
    • BIOMOL, ChemBridge
    • LOPAC, Maybridge
    • MicroSource, Prestwick
  • 10,000 natural products
  • Access to siRNA libraries
  • Investigator compounds
EquipmentEquipmentEquipment
  • Liquid workstations
  • Robot-amenable readers
  • Automation platforms
  • High-content system
  • Front-end automation
  • Live cell incubation chamber
  • Robotic library replicator
  • Bar-coded inventory system
  • –30°C and –80°C storage

Equipment Highlights

Biomek FX with Span-8, 96-well liquid handler, and hotel capacity. Utilized mainly for cherry-picking and assay development.

CatX (Wall-E) robotic workstation including a shaking CO2-capable incubator, plate hotel, plate washer, two reagent dispensers, and plate reader.

PlateMate Plus used primarily in library dispensing via pinning or pipetting and 96-well plate duplication.

Cellomics ArrayScan® VTI high-content analysis workstation utilizing a CatX arm (EVA), plate hotel, and CO2 incubator. The ArrayScan VTI unit has four fluorescent channels, bright field, and a live cell chamber.

Staff

Michel Roberge, Ph.D. — Division Chair

UBC Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Dr. Roberge has expertise in the development of cell-based assays and the discovery of small molecules that modulate the cell cycle and cancer cell invasion. Full bio

Tom Pfeifer, Ph.D. — Head

Dr. Pfeifer possesses expertise in functional, cell-based assays for human G-protein-coupled receptors, protein expression, molecular biology genomic and proteomic analyses, and pharmacogenomics. Full bio