High-throughput screening presented at SBS 14th Annual Conference & Exhibition
Posted by currentprotocolsblog on May 9, 2008
The 14th Annual Conference of the Society for Biomolecular Sciences (SBS) was held April 6-10 in St. Louis, Missouri. The SBS (www.sbsonline.org) is dedicated to drug discovery, and the concurrent sessions and poster sessions covered a wide range of methods and developments in high-throughput and high-content screening and medicinal chemistry. Sessions covered everything from libraries and cells, assays design, automation, detection, hit identification, data analysis, and ADME/Toxicology, as well as sessions focusing on specific diseases.
Originally started to support professionals in the chemistry and pharmaceutical industries, SBS is also dedicated to fostering collaborations with academia. SBS has made concerted efforts towards outreach to the academic community, where applications of these methods are growing rapidly in drug discovery as well as in the development of tools for basic life science and chemistry research. To this end, one concurrent session was dedicated to “Screening in the Public Sector,” with talks from leaders of academic and NIH screening centers. These provided an excellent overview of the specific challenges in academic research and development of chemical tools for biological research, and of the kinds of projects that are being undertaken. For a look at the public sector in the U.K., Catherine Kettleborough et al. presented a poster on screening efforts at the MRC Technology’s Drug Discovery Group.
