Charles River Makes Investments In High-Throughput Screening Infrastructure

By Bio-IT World Staff

February 6, 2018 | Charles River announced a new agreement which grants Charles River commercial access to AstraZeneca’s high-throughput screening (HTS) and compound management infrastructure. Through the agreement, Charles River will perform HTS programs for its clients utilizing AstraZeneca’s state-of-the-art HTS facility.

In a contributed commentary published last year, AstraZeneca wrote how their R&D organization is responsible for conducting compound screening across multiple disease areas at multiple global sites and across all phases of drug discovery. These activities span high throughput screening (HTS) through lead identification, lead optimization, and drug safety screening and metabolism.

Charles River will place scientists-in-residence at AstraZeneca’s Centre for Lead Discovery in Cambridge, United Kingdom, to manage its compound collection and run HTS for clients with a comprehensive range of assay technologies, liquid handling platforms, and automated storage systems. The highly dynamic and brand-new compound management and HTS facility is equipped to provide efficient drug discovery screening services from assay conception to hit identification.

“Providing our clients access to AstraZeneca’s HTS technology enhances our existing capabilities by broadening our assay platforms and increasing our ability to automate, ultimately allowing us to execute HTS projects with greater speed and accuracy,” Ian Waddell, Executive Director, Biology at Charles River, said in a press release.

“Through our longstanding relationship with AstraZeneca, we have developed and implemented best practices that allow us to complete studies more efficiently and effectively,” said Brian Bathgate, Corporate Senior Vice President, European Safety Assessment at Charles River, in a written statement following the announcement. “Access to AstraZeneca’s HTS technology is another collaboration that will enable us to continue to deliver groundbreaking science.”