Could you explain to me, how do assay cascades work during the DMTA (Design-Make-Test-Analyze) cycle of Drug Discovery? What is involed in it? How many assays are usually present?
Dear Dr. Anna Szekely
A DMTA cycle is the iterative process of designing new compounds, synthesizing them, testing them in various assays, and analyzing the results prior to the next round of designs. The link below will be helpful!
https://www.technologynetworks.com/drug-discovery/articles/assay-development-329953#:~:text=types%20and%20technologies-,The%20purpose%20of%20assay%20development%20and%20screening%20in%20drug%20discovery,%2C%20cellular%2C%20or%20biochemical%20targets.
Regards,
Malcolm Nobre
The number and type of assays varies depending on the needs of the project, and they will change as the project progresses. Judgement is also involved in deciding what assays are necessary at any given time.
Thanks for the answers so far! Is there a typical workflow for assays? Like primary assays are always checking activity, then ADMET parameters and so on...? Can I check a couple of examples in patents? I'm just curious if there is a pattern in them.
Patents can be a challenge to parse for this sort of information. I'd suggest looking through articles in peer-reviewed medicinal chemistry journals such as the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Look at journal articles describing the discovery of drugs.