“Getting Better Drugs Faster”: Game-Changing Technologies for Drug Development by NanoTemper Technologies

Following a successful inaugural meeting in 2014, the 2nd Drug Discovery Forum (DDF) took place on May 8–11, 2016 at the Westin Grand Hotel in Munich. This meeting was characterized by intensive networking and scientific exchange among 100 participants and guest speakers from renowned pharmaceutical companies and institutes from all over the world.

“Getting better drugs faster”, this is what Dr. Stefan Duhr and Dr. Philipp Baaske, CEOs of NanoTemper Technologies, envisioned when they started building the first instruments. The user presentations at DDF showed us that their vision has become reality.

We learned that NanoTemper’s technologies are an integral part of the drug discovery and development processes in pharmaceutical industries. For example, MicroScale Thermophoresis (MST) single-point binding and affinity screens have helped identify more drug candidates by delivering unique hits that were missed with orthogonal techniques. In cases where other biophysical methods gave contradictory results, MST was used as a decision-making tool. Thus, MST speeds up the development process significantly. We are further supporting MST technology with a new Assay Development Software and a novel His-Tag Labeling Kit, both introduced during the DDF.

Although just introduced at the end of 2014, nanoDSF is perceived as game-changing technology for measuring protein stability, with widespread use in the development of biopharmaceuticals and biosimiliars. To enhance ease-of-use and provide unattended operation, we officially launched the automated nanoDSF solution at DDF: The new Prometheus NT.Plex is a high-performance nanoDSF instrument that provides high-quality protein unfolding curves, melting temperatures (Tm) and aggregation onsets (Tagg). In addition, it can provide Gibbs free enthalpy (ΔG) of a protein in just three seconds.

The Prometheus NT.Plex supports the new capillary chips for nanoDSF, which enable automated workflows. Using our new NT.Robotic Autosampler, the Prometheus NT.Plex can be integrated with the vast majority of liquid handling platforms. The autosampler is a very flexible platform based on proven technology that does not only support automated sampling for up to three Prometheus NT.Plex instruments, but can also be used with our Monolith NT.Automated, or combinations of both instruments. Depending on the configuration, the number of samples that can be processed and analyzed in an automated fashion is virtually unlimited.

We have addressed the strong demand for using nanoDSF technology in regulated environments with new software features that support GxP and 21CFR Part 11 compliance. The software is developed in close cooperation with partners in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure seamless integration within existing environments.

Surface Acoustic Wave, the latest addition to the NanoTemper portfolio, has been demonstrated to be a valuable tool for quantifying binding-induced conformational changes and assessing binding kinetics.