Forum:What Is Your Assessment Of The Current State And Plausibility Of The Virtual High-Throughput Screening Field?

Question

[Dan D]

I used to work in a high-throughput screening facility. My work was mainly on the lab automation side of things, and as I got more into programming I got recruited into the high-throughput sequencing realm. I enjoyed working in high-throughput screening though, and one thing that intrigued me was all of the hype around virtual high-throughput screening. In theory it sounded great: just model atomic interactions and save the copious amounts of cash required to physically screen a compound library. One postdoc with whom I worked took a job with a company in New Mexico which studied this, but he can't disclose anything he's working on, much to my chagrin.

Anyone care to share their perspective?

[Kevin Blighe]

Changed to forum

Answer 1

[Kevin Blighe]

Hello Dan,

I believe it should be used as a 'companion' method in, e.g., drug discovery / docking analyses, and not as the sole line of evidence on which a drug is developed. Hopefully the FDA agrees with me, but maybe they will not in another few years. It can certainly help to narrow down a list of candidate compounds, thus saving cash, as you implied.

Generally, and more broadly, I am worried that we are relaxing quality control mechanisms that have helped us to grow. There is evidence of this in different sectors.

Kevin