scientific Sessions

Drug screening is an important step in drug discovery before drug development. It is a process of identifying potential drug candidates for further development, such as preclinical and clinical studies. The process involves screening drugs from a large library of biologically active compounds.  

Several screening strategies are transforming the drug discovery processes. High throughput screening (HTS) assay is one of the most crucial assays in drug discovery. This process is routinely utilized in early-stage drug discovery to identify the hit molecules from an extensive library containing thousands of active compounds with activity against the target. Once the hit is detected, they are validated to produce the lead with improved selectivity and potency. These leads are termed potential drug candidates and proceed to further testing, such as preclinical testing. Another revolutionized technique is high-content screening (HCS), which complements the HTS. HCS integrates the application of HTS with cellular imaging to analyze data from a complicated biological system. Finally, fragment-based drug discovery is a bottom-up approach to drug screening that uses smaller libraries of low-complexity compounds, which enables reduced research investments and high specificity.