Technological Advances In Drug Screening    

DANBURY — Dr E. Michael August, senior principal scientist in the High Throughput Biology Group at Ridgefield-based Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, will report from the front lines of current technological breakthroughs revolutionizing the process of drug discovery in a lecture on Thursday, April 21, at Western Connecticut State University.

Dr August will discuss “High Throughput Screening in Drug Discovery: Finding the Needle in the Haystack” at 7 pm in WCSU Science Building (Room 125), located on the university’s midtown campus on White Street. Admission to the talk, sponsored by the WCSU “Science at Night” lecture series, is free and the public is invited to attend. A reception with light refreshments will follow.

The experimentation method known as high throughput screening (HTS) has transformed scientific testing to discover new drugs by using computer data processing and control software, robotics automation, and sophisticated liquid handling and detection methods to enable researchers to screen vastly increased numbers of compound samples within a short time for potential usefulness in drug treatments.

In his position at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Dr August is responsible for development of test compounds, or assays, and for HTS analysis of these target substances to identify compounds for further investigation as potential drugs for the treatment of inflammatory, cardiometabolic, and viral diseases.

“The talk will focus on the principles and practice of high throughput screening as an integral component of the drug discovery process,” said Dr August. “Although relatively new, HTS is a rapidly expanding field that combines biochemistry and cutting-edge laboratory automation to uncover potential new drug candidates by testing tens to hundreds of thousands of samples per day.”

Automation of the process of preparing, incubating, and analyzing assay plates has combined with computerized data collection and analysis to provide the capacity in HTS systems to test 100,000 or more compounds per day. Since only a small fraction of compounds screened ultimately produce leads for further research and development of potential drugs, HTS technology has achieved a major breakthrough in drug development by dramatically shortening the timeframe and expanding the volume of assay screenings conducted simultaneously in the laboratory.

Boehringer Ingelheim’s establishment of the High Throughput Biology Group at the Ridgefield research facility reflects the critical importance of the HTS process in advancing the company’s pharmaceutical mission.

For more information, contact Dr Thomas Philbrick, WCSU professor of biological and environmental sciences ,at philbrickt@wcsu.edu or 203-837-8773.