Fee For Service

A comprehensive service to drug discovery clients including……

• assay development (cell-based or biochemical)
• reagent testing and scale-up (recombinant cells or protein)
• proof of concept with validation (activity of known compounds in the chosen assay)
• high throughput screening (many compounds, one assay)
• compound profiling (few compound, many assays)

Our “fee for service” model is simple; we charge a set fee for our assay development services and a subsequent fee per well for each compound screened. A typical service has the following description and deliverables………

We design, develop and build assays to suit your needs following consultation with you. We either source reagents from suppliers, manufacture them according to the needs of your project, or use the reagents provided by you. We validate your assay using any pharmacological tools available in the most appropriate plate format selected for screening purposes. We charge clients a set fee for assay development work. Costs are dependent on assay complexity and project timelines.

If the assay is built for high throughput screening, we would perform an assay robustness step.

Assay Development and Pharmacological Validation

Service
Assay Development and Pharmacological Validation

Description
Using recombinant cell line, primary cells or protein to develop a fit for purpose assay

Deliverables
Assay built for either iterative screening or HTS purposes (e.g. FLIPR, protease, kinase, label free) using cell line or protein provided by client or commercially sourced.Assay validated using pharmacological characterisation of up to 8 standard compounds to XC₅₀

Price
POA

Assay Robustness testing

Service
Assay Robustness for HTS purposes

Description
Assay development performed by Aurelia Bioscience or client assay transferred to Aurelia Bioscience – little or no assay development required

Deliverables
Correlation of a set of compounds and pharmacology of standards between replicates within and between days or comparison of pharmacology were necessary between client data and Aurelia Bioscience data together with assessment of assay quality using Z-factors and reproducibility

Price
POA

The next stage of the project would be high throughput screening. We charge clients a fee per well for each well screened. Costs reflect the assay complexity and plate format. If we can miniaturise your assay into 384 well or 1536 well plates we will pass on savings to our clients through a reduced fees per well.

The screening of large numbers of compounds will also introduce savings in terms of the fee per well as we can pass on bulk discounts on externally sourced reagents to our clients.

Screening

Service
Cell based OR Biochemical based Screening (HTS)

Description
10,000 to 500,000 compounds*
* Note: Compound numbers are used to exemplify our capability and throughput

Deliverables
In all cases below we would perform the primary screen (one compound per well) provided by the client either in assay ready plates or as a transfer from a source “mother” plate provided by the client and transferred into the assay. Retest would be in triplicate at the same concentration after analysis and feedback from the client on compounds to re-screen. These would be “cherry-picked” and re-screened. XC₅₀ data would be generated using 10 point dose- response curve as directed by the client using the data generated in the retest phase to select the most appropriate compounds for XC₅₀ determination

Price
POA

In some cases clients do not want a high throughput screen but wish to evaluate a technology and/or pharmacologically profile compounds in a new or different assay format. In these cases we would perform an exploratory biology project, designing and developing an assay with the clients own target cells or protein and demonstrating the pharmacology of client compounds in the assay.

We have two examples shown here, involving either one technology and a number of targets or one target and a number of technologies. In each case, following the development of the assay, the pharmacological characterisation of the clients compounds would be performed.

Exploratory Biology

Service
Exploratory Biology: Example 1

Description
One technology used to evaluate the activity of three targets

Deliverables
Evaluating up to three cell lines or reagents(proteins) in the same technology format e.g. three targets, each cell line or protein tested in label free with pharmacological characterisation up to 4 standard compounds to XC₅₀

Price
POA

Service
Exploratory Biology: Example 2

Description
One target evaluated using up to three technologies

Deliverables
Evaluating one cell line or protein in a number of biological readouts e.g. for cell based GPCR receptor coupled through Gi, technology may included FLIPR together with label free response and cAMP measurement on same target to pharmacologically characterise the responses using up to 4 standard compounds (XC₅₀)

Price
POA

Consultancy
In addition we also provide a consultation service on the development of assay cascades designed to increase the physiological relevance of your data whilst reducing the number of non-specific compounds in the output by developing the most appropriate assays for the project.