Top News Stories This Month in Drug Discovery

Learn from the editorial articles about stem cell technologies and 3D cell culture innovations of 2014, read about method validation, LC/MS technologies, tumor models, and drug metabolite purification.

Pluripotent Stem Cell Technologies for Cardiac Recovery
Michelle Maxwell, SelectScience Editor, spoke with Adjunct Assistant Professor Winston Shim, Principal Investigator of Regenerative Medicine at the National Heart Research Institute Singapore (NHRIS), National Heart Centre Singapore. Prof. Shim, who is recognized for focusing on functional recovery of the heart utilizing stem cells, jointly hosted a workshop at the National Heart Centre with Thermo Fisher Scientific to provide basic research and clinical scientists with the latest in pluripotent stem cell technologies.

3D Cell Culture Innovations of 2014
A 3D cell culture is an artificially-created environment in which biological cells are permitted to grow or interact with its surroundings in all three dimensions. This year, there have been a number of innovations that can be applied to 3D cell culture. The main categories are extracellular matrices or scaffolds, modified surfaces, rotating bioreactors, microscopy, magnetic levitation and hanging drop plates.

Exclusive Webinar Highlights: Increasing Efficiency of Method Validation
Validated analytical methods are vital to achieve consistent, accurate and reliable results. In addition to being an integral part of Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), method validation is a legal requirement to meet the standards of most regulatory bodies. There are multiple challenges during the validation process, from planning the analytical testing in the protocol to the calculation of results and comparison with acceptance criteria.

Structure Characterization and Differentiation of Biosimilar and Reference Products Using Unique Combination of Complementary Fragmentation Mechanisms
A LC-MS/MS workflow was developed for differentiating minor difference of protein structure in biosimilar and reference products using an Orbitrap Fusion LC-MS/MS, and PepFinder 1.0 software. This new approach offers efficient, confident and comprehensive analysis, not only for biosimilar comparability study, but also for lot-to-lot comparison of a same compound.

Drug Metabolite Purification and Identification Using the Agilent Analytical-Scale Purification System and Agilent 6540 Accurate-Mass Quadrupole Time-of-Flight (Q-TOF) LC/MS System
This application note describes how the entire invasion assay procedure, from spheroid formation through monitoring of the invasion process, can be performed in one plate, which makes the process much easier to perform. Instructions for forming the invasion matrix are also included.

Imaging of Tumor Growth and Metastasis In a Pancreatic Cancer Mouse Model
This application note describes the use of Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis for size and concentration measurements of drug delivery nanoparticles. In addition, by using a fluorescently tagged drug molecule, it was possible to determine how many drug delivery nanoparticles had successfully been loaded with drug molecules.