Wake Forest takes ‘lab-on-bead’ approach for drug discovery with Biotech Center backing
Using what they call a “lab-on-bead” approach, Wake Forest University researchers are seeking to use nanotechnology as a means to discover new cancer-fighting drugs.
The effort is being funded in part by $75,000 from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.
If successful, the process could speed up the drug discovery process substantially, the scientists say.
Wake Forest’s Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials is participating in the project. Researchers are screening millions of chemicals simultaneously on nano-scale beads. The bead includes a separate chemical that can be tracked if it shows capabilities of treating cancer.
“This process allows the beads to do the work for you,” said Jed Macosko, project director and an assistant professor of physics at Wake Forest. “By working at this scale, we will be able to screen more than a billion possible drug candidates per day as opposed to the current limit of hundreds of thousands per day.”
Other WFU researchers involved in the project are Martin Guthold and Keith Bonin. All three are part of the physics department.
Scientists from the University of Waterloo in Canada also are taking part, developing a process to automate the “lab-on-bead” process.
Harvard University and the Universite Louis Pasteur in France are providing chemicals of interest.
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