Rapid In vitro screening of potential drug compounds
Cytokine and cell based assays are quick and provide the ability to interpret and predict many biological properties of potential drug compounds. Cytokines and related molecules have been implicated in inflammatory diseases such as rheumatic disease, multiple sclerosis, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and autoimmune diseases as well as cancer and infectious diseases. These cell based assays provide the ability to determine a potential compounds affect on cell proliferation, cytokine production and cellular responses.
MD Biosciences uses a number of primary and immortalized cell lines to assay test compounds for their effect on inflammatory mediator production, signal transduction pathway activation, transcription factor activity, gene expression and other specialized assays. Using these in vitro cell based assays, compounds can be rapidly and cost effectively screened for activity prior to more expensive and time consuming in vivo analysis.
Two approaches for in vitro assays are available: