AFFINITY IMAGE-INSTRUMENTATION FOR DRUG DISCOVERY

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The discovery of drug leads by screening combinatorial libraries has become an important mandate of many pharmaceutical companies.Because of the vast number of compounds produced it is necessary to employ methods for testing the libraries in pools rather than individually. Intelligent Optical Systems, proposes a fast, inexpensive miniaturized, automated. highly sensitive, labelless, optical imaging instrument ("Affinity Image") for rapid screening and characterization of combinatorial libraries in high-throughput (HTS) and ultra high- throughput (UHTS) screening assays. The proposed instrument will be extremely flexible and will have the potential to perform dynamic and equilibrium assays for more than 4000 different targets simultaneously. Since no labels are needed and multiple assays can be performed simultaneously this instrument represents substantial savings in the material and labor costs for the industry. The feasibility of Affinity Image as a tool for HTS applications will be demonstrated with model systems. During Phase I of this project two model systems will be tested: (l) epitope mapping of anti-b-endorphin antibody and (2) probing peptide and nonpeptide ligands that bind to the biotin binding site of streptavidin. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: Affinity Image will be of primary interest to pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries involved in drug discovery. Affinity Image would be sold to more than 275 pharmaceutical companies worldwide with multiple research locations and to virtually all other private, academic, and publically supported bioanalytical laboratories.