Approach to Automation for Early Phase Drug Development
In the last three to four years the laboratory automation industry has been focusing most of its efforts in the area of drug discovery. This direction is the result of pharmaceutical companies investing millions of dollars into their discovery efforts. Ultra high throughput screening and microplate technology are some of the results of their effort.
In our laboratory we are addressing the automation needs in drug development. Drug development has the extra challenge of meeting GMP/GLP requirements set forth by the FDA. The investment into automation has obvious advantages. There are many areas in development that can be explored. Here we focus on an automated system to determine the solubility of NCE compounds. Compound solubility, used for formulation support, requires the testing of multiple forms (e.g., salts) of a lead compound in solutions of varying ionic strength and pH.