Horizon eBook - 8

Innovations in Cell-Based Screening * Phenotypic Screens Rise in Popularity

enhancers in primary and stem cell-derived neurons and glial cells. The lab is
currently working on 384-well throughput systems, measuring protein levels
and dendrite mis-sorting in a variety of cells.
Dr. Kim and colleagues are also looking at identifying identify existing
drugs that might be repositioned as Alzheimer's treatments. For APoE enhancers,
the lab has screened over 15,000 compounds with a hit rate of 1.8%.
Cell Assays
Other research is tackling another major problem with phenotypic screening:
developing relevant assays in human tumor cells and other cell cultures. One
major problem is actually growing the cultures, which involves ensuring that
a sufficient number of cells are available for assay, since cells often lose their
ability to reproduce.
Propagenix, a company set up last April, is developing the conditional
reprogramming (CR) cell technology, which allows epithelial and tumor cell
cultures to grow in a stem-cell-like state, and to return to their normal state
once removed from the culture media. The technique involves adding irradiated
fibroblast feeder cells and the rho kinase (ROCK) inhibitor, Y-27632.
CR was developed by virologist Richard Schlegel, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the
pathology department at Georgetown University Medical Center's Lombardi
Cancer Center, and one of the inventors of the human papilloma virus (HPV)
vaccine. In 2011, Dr. Schlegel was developing a new tissue culture to study the
HPV virus, explains Brian Pollok, Propagenix's CEO.
8

| GENengnews.com

Conditional reprogramming technology, developed in the Georgetown
University laboratory of virologist Richard Schlegel, M.D., Ph.D., allows
epithelial and tumor cell cultures to grow in a stem-cell-like state, and to
return to their normal state once removed from culture. The technology
is now being developed by Propagenix.



http://www.GENengnews.com

Horizon eBook

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Horizon eBook

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