Biological Sciences

The high throughput screening (HTS) laboratory at the Merck Frosst Centre for Therapeutic Research is a central part of the drug discovery effort in Montréal. The aim of such robotic laboratories is to minimize drug discovery cycle time and costs, while maintaining quality.

At the research centre, plate formats of up to 3456 wells per plate allow screening of up to 10,000 samples daily for biological activity, in the hope of finding lead compounds for each line of research. Samples come from the Merck & Co., Inc. library of experimental compounds. Progressive miniaturization to higher density plate formats is crucial to minimize depletion of the library and the scientists at Merck Frosst are at the forefront of developing this technology. In many programs researchers will also screen natural products, especially if the sample collection does not yield leads.

Depending on the biochemical target, around 1% of samples will show enough activity to be investigated further, often by working with computational chemistry to tag core structures on each molecule to weed out undesirable characteristics such as toxicity. Between one and 10 samples will emerge from the screening process with the potency and selectivity to become a lead compound.