Optical small animal imaging in the drug discovery process

Small animal imaging in drug development.

Better mechanistic understanding of disease through mapping of the human and mouse genomes enables rethinking of human infirmity. In the case of cancer, e.g., we may begin to associate disease states with their underlying genetic defects rather than with the organ system involved. That will enable more selective, nontoxic therapies in patients who are genetically predisposed to respond to them....

The drug discovery process.

Optical imaging for the new grammar of drug discovery.

Optical technologies used in biomedical research have undergone tremendous development in the last decade and enabled important insight into biochemical, cellular and physiological phenomena at the microscopic and macroscopic level. Historically in drug discovery, to increase throughput in screening, or increase efficiency through automation of image acquisition and analysis in pathology, effor...

Cell and small animal models for phenotypic drug discovery

The phenotype-based drug discovery (PDD) approach is re-emerging as an alternative platform for drug discovery. This review provides an overview of the various model systems and technical advances in imaging and image analyses that strengthen the PDD platform. In PDD screens, compounds of therapeutic value are identified based on the phenotypic perturbations produced irrespective of target(s) o...

Comparison of noninvasive fluorescent and bioluminescent small animal optical imaging.

Optical imaging is a modality that is cost-effective, rapid, easy to use, and can be readily applied to studying disease processes and biology in vivo. For this study, we used a green fluorescent protein (GFP)- and luciferase-expressing mouse tumor model to compare and contrast the quantitative and qualitative capabilities of a fluorescent reporter gene (GFP) and a bioluminescent reporter gene ...