Types of Biochemical Assays We Develop
Our team designs and implements biochemical assays spanning enzymatic, interaction, and biophysical formats to support diverse discovery needs. We perform both custom assay establishment and refinement of client-supplied assays, prioritizing assay sensitivity, stability, and reproducibility. Platforms are built using advanced, automation-compatible technologies to ensure seamleass scalability into high-throughput screening environments.
Enzymatic assays
Enzymes remain the most successful and validated class of drug targets, representing the largest proportion of approved therapeutics and recent clinical candidates. Their catalytic activity enables clear, quantifiable functional readouts, making them ideally suited for high-throughput screening (HTS). Enzymatic assays are fundamental tools in drug discovery, enabling precise measurement of enzyme activity and its modulation by small molecules. By monitoring substrate conversion or product formation under controlled conditions, these assays provide critical insights into compound potency, mechanism of action, and selectivity.
Our enzymatic assay platforms are optimized for HTS, hit identification, and lead optimization. We develop robust, reproducible assays using fluorescence, luminescence, absorbance, or coupled detection technologies to support both primary screening and detailed kinetic characterization (e.g., IC50, Km, Vmax, and inhibition or activation mode analysis). Assays can be tailored to a broad range of target classes, including kinases, proteases, phosphatases, epigenetic enzymes, and metabolic enzymes. We optimize all assay components based on the type of compounds to be identified: whether inhibitors, activators, competitive, allosteric, or multifunctional modulators, and perform extensive buffer screening to ensure the most robust and reproducible readout.
With strong biological expertise, rigorous assay validation, and automation-ready workflows, we ensure robustness, scalability, and data integrity, enabling seamless transition from assay development to large-scale screening and hit confirmation, and accelerating your path from target to lead.
Interaction assays
Protein–protein, protein–DNA, and protein–RNA interactions are central to disease biology but have traditionally been considered challenging targets due to their large, flat interfaces. Advances in assay design, structural biology, and chemical modalities now make it possible to identify tractable interaction sites and effectively modulate them with small molecules or novel therapeutic strategies such as PROTACs, molecular glues, and complex stabilizers.
Our team combines deep expertise with a flexible assay optimization platform to configure highly sensitive, HTS-ready assays capable of detecting subtle modulation, induced proximity, and ternary complex formation.
We address a wide spectrum of interactions, including transcription factor–DNA binding and RNA-mediated regulatory complexes, enabling precise interrogation of targets relevant to oncology, inflammation, neurodegeneration, and rare diseases. With extensive experience and multiple successful HTS campaigns, we deliver robust, reproducible, and scalable platforms that support the discovery of inhibitors, stabilizers, degraders, and molecular glue compounds, accelerating your drug discovery programs.
Biophysical assays
Biophysical assays provide critical orthogonal validation in drug discovery, offering direct insights into molecular interactions, binding affinities, and target engagement. Unlike primary high-throughput screening assays, these assays are designed for detailed characterization, making them ideal for hit qualification and mechanistic studies.
Our expertise covers a range of biophysical techniques, including Thermal Shift Assay (TSA/DSF), Temperature-Related Intensity Change (TRIC), Spectral Shift, and Tycho analysis. These platforms enable precise measurement of protein stability, ligand binding, and conformational changes. Notably, we also have extensive experience applying TSA to RNA targets, expanding the range of macromolecules that can be interrogated.
By integrating biophysical data with biochemical and cellular assays, we provide a comprehensive understanding of compound-target interactions, helping to guide hit validation, lead optimization, and mechanistic elucidation.
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