The NIH’s Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) was created as part of an NIH initiative to discover novel compounds that can be used to investigate fundamental biological questions or to validate drug targets.
Under the collaboration, the NCGC will use Invitrogen’s CellSensor cell lines and GeneBLAzer beta-lactamase reporter gene technology to identify compounds that modulate disease relevant signaling pathways. Interrogating complete signal transduction cascades in their normal cellular context – as opposed to assaying individual signaling proteins in isolation – combined with the NCGC’s titration-based quantitative high throughput screening (qHTS) paradigm, allows for a greater variety of compound interaction mechanisms to be captured.
All of the screening data from the collaboration will be deposited in PubChem, an NIH database that links chemical structures to biological activities uncovered through screening campaigns. Thus the identified compounds can be further investigated by the research community to deepen molecular understanding of biological processes involved in disease progression.
As these new assays generate compounds of interest, Invitrogen and the NCGC may agree to work together to identify the protein targets they affect through the use of additional Invitrogen technologies such as Stealth RNAi and Protoarray Human Protein Microarrays.