Brian T Cunningham1, Lance G Laing. 1. Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, 208 North Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA +1 217 265 6291 ; +1 217 244 6375 ; bcunning@uiuc.edu.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Adoption is accelerating for a new family of label-free optical biosensors incorporated into standard format microplates owing to their ability to enable highly sensitive detection of small molecules, proteins and cells for high-throughput drug discovery applications. OBJECTIVE: Label-free approaches are displacing other detection technologies owing to their ability to provide simple assay procedures for hit finding/validation, accessing difficult target classes, screening the interaction of cells with drugs and analyzing the affinity of small molecule inhibitors to target proteins. METHODS: This review describes several new drug discovery applications that are under development for microplate-based photonic crystal optical biosensors and the key issues that will drive adoption of the technology. RESULTS/ CONCLUSIONS: Microplate-based optical biosensors are enabling a variety of cell-based assays, inhibition assays, protein-protein binding assays and protein-small molecule binding assays to be performed with high-throughput and high sensitivity.
BACKGROUND: Adoption is accelerating for a new family of label-free optical biosensors incorporated into standard format microplates owing to their ability to enable highly sensitive detection of small molecules, proteins and cells for high-throughput drug discovery applications. OBJECTIVE: Label-free approaches are displacing other detection technologies owing to their ability to provide simple assay procedures for hit finding/validation, accessing difficult target classes, screening the interaction of cells with drugs and analyzing the affinity of small molecule inhibitors to target proteins. METHODS: This review describes several new drug discovery applications that are under development for microplate-based photonic crystal optical biosensors and the key issues that will drive adoption of the technology. RESULTS/ CONCLUSIONS: Microplate-based optical biosensors are enabling a variety of cell-based assays, inhibition assays, protein-protein binding assays and protein-small molecule binding assays to be performed with high-throughput and high sensitivity.