THE PLATFORM

DiscoverHIT

Discovering effective drug candidates for preclinical
development requires innovative and reliable science; from disease models to tailored assays and robust high-throughput screening systems.

DiscoverHIT is an integrated, four-component drug discovery platform. Using Ncardia's recognized expertise in stem cell-based drug discovery experience, we enable you to bring predictive and translational human disease biology early into your drug discovery pipeline with speed and confidence.

DiscoverHIT is a full service HTS-screening platform based on human induced pluripotent stem cell technology. Efficacy of compound libraries are assayed and screened on your specific disease model. This comprehensive service is comprised of four integrated modules; disease modeling, manufacturing, assay development and high throughput phenotypic screening.

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Disease models

The utility of a cell-based disease model relies upon generation of a demonstrable phenotype that closely reflects the underlying biology of the disease. We develop human iPSC-derived cardiac and neuronal disease models of your choice depending on your requirements to enable target or phenotypic drug discovery, as well as guiding structure–activity relationship (SAR) studies.

Patient-derived

Cardiomyocytes bearing physiologically relevant functional phenotypes can be generated from an individual with a genetic, ethnic or disease background.

Induced

Disease phenotypes can be induced in "healthy" cells through utilzation of disease-relevant stimuli.

CRISPR-edited

Targeted CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing enables the rapid creation of cell lines containing disease-associated mutations.

 

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Controlled, large-scale manufacturing

Consistent, high-quality large-scale manufacturing of functional hiPSC-derived cells is key to implementing hiPSC-based phenotypic disease models in drug discovery and development.

DiscoverHIT features a bioprocessing pipeline comprised of state-of-the-art bioreactor systems to assess and optimize critical process parameters at small scale, validate conditions at mid scale, and manufacture at 3-10 L scale in an automated closed system.

 

Download the Whitepaper

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Assay development

The DiscoverHIT Platform includes in-house readout systems to develop physiologically relevant and high throughput-compatible human cell-based phenotypic assays. We select optimal disease assay conditions in combination with appropriate high-content readouts following expert evaluation of assay performance parameters, including S/B ratio and assay window.

Reproducibility is crucial for a successful compound screening. We assess key assay parameters such as Z-factor, coefficient variation of controls and Pearson correlation of replicates between plates with a small set of reference compounds. Qualified assays are released for subsequent drug screening.

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High Throughput Screening

Successful drug efficacy screening and validation requires a physiologically relevant cell model and validated high throughput screening (HTS) protocols to efficiently screen drug candidates.

DiscoverHIT features a fully automated HTS platform for lead identification, hit-confirmation and dose-response curve generation. The platform includes miniaturization into 384-well format and automated cell culturing, qualification of screening plates, high content data acquisition, analysis and reporting.