CSIRO SOFTWARE STREAMLINES DRUG DISCOVERY

Main Menu | News By Date | News By Supplier | News By Category | About Us

CSIRO SOFTWARE STREAMLINES DRUG DISCOVERY
14 October 2006 - CSIRO

Potential new drugs for neurological disorders, like Parkinson’s are being screened faster thanks to software developed by CSIRO that automatically assesses a drug’s effect on nerve cells.

Looking for the right drug
Speeding up the process
Potential new drugs for neurological disorders like Parkinson's are being screened faster thanks to world-leading CSIRO software that automatically assesses a drug's effect on nerve cells.

Looking for the right drug
In the search for new pharmaceuticals, thousands of chemical compounds are screened to see if they're effective and safe.

CSIRO's software is being used to find new treatments for neurological disorders by measuring nerve cell changes faster and more thoroughly than other commercially available software, this means thousands of samples can be screened in a day.

The CSIRO software is now in software toolkits for several high content screening instruments, with German company Evotec Technologies announcing its CSIRO licence last month.

Speeding up the process
CSIRO's Pascal Vallotton says that cell counting and allocating neurites to individual cells is traditionally done manually.

‘Nerve cells have very complex branches, like a tree. For a person to work out which branches belong to which cells and then measure changes due to the drugs being tested is difficult and slow’, he says.

‘With this kind of resource at their fingertips, it will be easier to find treatments for diseases’ Dr Pascal Vallotton, CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences‘Not only that, different technicians will usually give different answers’.

The CSIRO software can also be used in high content screening instruments because it can automatically analyse cell changes in an instant.

These instruments capture and process images of the cells, giving critical measurements that help pharmaceutical companies decide which compounds to investigate further.

‘With this kind of resource at their fingertips, it will be easier to find treatments for diseases’, says Dr Vallotton.

http://www.csiro.au

About: CSIRO
CSIRO is Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

As one of the world's largest and most diverse scientific global research organisations, work touches every aspect of Australian life: from the molecules that build life to the molecules in space.

Working from sites across the nation and around the globe, our 6500 staff are focussed on providing new ways to improve quality of life, as well as the economic and social performance of a number of industry sectors, through research and development.

These sectors are:

Agribusiness
Energy and Transport
Environment and Natural Resources
Health
Information, Communication and Services
Manufacturing
Mineral Resources

More News:
  • For October 2006
  • From CSIRO
  • For Contract Research Organisation