In experiments involving the generation of computational pharmacophores based on data derived either by acoustic transfer using direct dilution or by traditional tip-based transfer using serial dilutions, scientists have shown that the acoustic approach generates a pharmacophore that is predictive for biological activity in new compounds. It is also consistent with pharmacophores generated from X-ray crystallographic data. The tip-based approach, on the other hand, generates a pharmacophore that is both non-predictive of biological activity and inconsistent with the X-ray crystallographic data. The authors conclude that traditional tip-based dispensing processes are an important source of error in high-throughput screening that can impact computational and statistical analyses. They suggest that these findings have far-reaching applications in biological research. This study was published online in an open-access article in PLOS ONE on May 1, 2013. The authors were Sean Elkins Ph.D., VP of Science at Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc., and Adjunct Professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Joe Olechno, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, Labcyte Inc.; and Antony Williams, Ph.D., VP of Strategic Development at the Royal Society of Chemistry. The image is courtesy of Labcyte Inc. [PLOS ONE article]
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