Swedish scientists have developed a technique to directly measure the extent to which drugs reach their targets in the cell. The method, developed by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, could make a significant contribution to the development of new, improved drug substances.
Most drugs operate by binding to one or more proteins and affecting their function, which creates two common bottlenecks in the development of drugs; identifying the right target proteins and designing drug molecules able to efficiently seek out and bind to them.
Now researchers have developed a new tool called CETSA (Cellular Thermal Shift Assay), which utilise the concept that target proteins usually get stabilised when drug molecules bind.