Target Identification and Validation in Drug Discovery

The Path to Oncology Drug Target Validation – an Industry Perspective.- Identification of Aptamers as Specific Binders and Modulators of Cell-Surface Receptor Activity.- The Design and Structure-functional Properties  of DNA-based Immunomodulatory Sequences.- siRNA Design Principles and Off-target Effects.- Western Blot Evaluation of siRNA Delivery by pH Responsive Peptides.- High Throughput RNAi Screening for the Identification of Novel Targets.- Integration of RNAi and Small Molecule Screens to Identify Targets for Drug Development.- CellProfiler and KNIME: Open Source Tools for High Content Screening.- PARP Inhibition as a Prototype for Synthetic Lethal Screens.- Structure-Based Target Druggability Assessment.- Validating Pharmacological Disruption of Protein-protein Interactions by Acceptor Photobleaching FRET Imaging.- Systematic Analysis of Complex Signal Transduction Pathways using Protein Fragment Complementation Assays.- Reverse-Phase Protein Microarrays and Their Utility in Drug Development.- A Cell Culture System that Mimics Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Cells Microenvironment for Drug Screening and Characterization.- 2-Dimensional vs. 3-Dimensional in vitro Tumor Migration and Invasion Assays.- Tumor Spheroid-based Migration Assays for Evaluation of Therapeutic Agents.- The NeuroSphere Assay (NSA) Applied to Neural Stem Cells (NSCs) and Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs).-Genetically Engineered Animal Models for in vivo Target Identification and Validation in Oncology.- Target Validation in Mice by Constitutive andConditional RNAi.- In vivo Target Validation by Inducible RNAi in Human Xenograft Mouse Models.- Brightfield In Situ Hybridization Methods to Discover Gene Amplifications and Rearrangements in Clinical Samples.- Combined microRNA In Situ Hybridization and Immunohistochemical Detection of Protein Markers.