Developing smarter assays to accelerate hit finding programs in small molecule drug discovery

Outsourcing early phase drug discovery research offers several challenges, especially with CROs that offer rigid, one-size-fits-all transactional workflows. This case study describes a young biotech company’s experience initiating a high-throughput screen for their enzyme target using the CRO’s recommended methodology. When the hit rate came back significantly high, the biotech company was forced to spend extra time and resources to triage real results from assay artifacts. When that became cost and time-prohibitive, they contacted Peapod Bio who offered the most collaborative approach to ensure that the assay and resulting data aligned with the company’s goals.