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Small Molecule Screens

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Cancer

Synonyms

Chemical biology screen; Chemical genetic screen; Compound screen; High-throughput screen

Definition

A small molecule screen is a procedure in which small molecules (typically organic compounds with a molecular weight under ∼1,000 g/mol) are systematically tested for their ability to activate, perturb, or modify a target or a biological process of interest.

Characteristics

The goal of small molecule screening is to identify compounds that modulate a particular biological process, and thus, can be used as, or developed into, tools for further medical research and/or small molecule drugs (molecular therapy). Typically, an assay is developed into a “high-throughput” screen, meaning that it is optimized for rapidly assaying thousands to hundreds of thousands of compounds in parallel and in an automated fashion. Large amounts of data are collected with the help of robotics, liquid handlers, and processing software. “Hits,” compounds that produce the desired assay result, are hence...

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References

  1. Collins I, Workman P (2006) New approaches to molecular cancer therapeutics. Nat Chem Biol 2(12):689–700

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  2. Stockwell BR (2000) Chemical genetics: ligand-based discovery of gene function. Nat Rev Genet 1(2):116–125

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  3. Stockwell BR (2004) Exploring biology with small organic molecules. Nature 423(7019):846–854

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ontario Cancer Institute/University Health Network, Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Kenneth W. Yip

  2. Department of Medical Biophysics, Princess Margaret Hospital/Ontario Cancer Institute, University Health Network, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Fei-Fei Liu

Authors
  1. Kenneth W. Yip
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  2. Fei-Fei Liu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kenneth W. Yip or Fei-Fei Liu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University Professor of Genetics, German Cancer Research Center - DKFZ, Heidelberg, Germany

    Manfred Schwab

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Copyright information

© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Yip, K.W., Liu, FF. (2011). Small Molecule Screens. In: Schwab, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cancer. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_5376

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