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Biotech / Medical : Aurora Biosciences (ABSC)
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To: Czechsinthemail who wrote (98)5/18/1998 12:41:00 AM
From: Richard Haugland  Read Replies (1) of 359
 
They seem to have some heavyweights signed up as partners already, so the technology must look pretty good to somebody.

I believe that the major drug companies are covering their options by signing contracts with several companies that are promising high-throughput screening. ABSC is certainly one of the major players and its forte is that it promises faster throughput due to miniaturization. There are intrinsic problems of this in that the decreased volume results in smaller signal changes and potential fluidics problems. I have also heard that sample evaporation on these small volumes is a real problem that must be surmounted. Other companies (e.g. Molecular Devices, LJL, Cellomics and others) are trying other approaches to this screening based on use of cells and various detection modalities. Amersham and NEN are dominant in radioactive screens and both active in trying to develop fluorescent dye-based screens.

However, ABSC has exclusive licenses on some interesting technology mostly from Roger Tsien's lab at UCSD that will not be available to these potential competitors.

Most of the current fluorescent dye-based screens are based on measuring calcium mobilization by potential drugs, which indicates that something happened when the drug interacted with the live cell. However, there are a lot of other potential mechanisms to study and, IMO, ABSC tends to lead in developing tools for these. Fluorescence-based methods probably have the greatest potential for use in HTS because they can be done in live cells in essentially real time.

The name of the game for all companies, however, will be delivery of functioning screening systems and screens in a relatively short period of time.

Too bad the stock's price does not reflect this promise.
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