Hit Validation and Progression

Finally, one must take into account that in using a coupled enzyme assay one must produce, or purchase, not only the target enzyme of interest but also the coupling enzymes and any co-substrates required for these additional protein reagents. Hence a coupled enzyme assay can be quite expensive to implement, especially for large library screening. In some cases the cost may be prohibitive, precluding the use of a particular coupled enzyme assay for HTS purposes. 

At the completion of a primary screening of a compound library, a collection of hits will be identified that meet or exceed the inhibition percentage cutoff for hit declaration (as described above). The next step is to ensure the validity of these primary screening results through a series of experimental procedures aimed at addressing two aspects of hit validation hit confirmation and hit verification. 

The term hit confirmation, as we define it, involves three components reproducibility, confirmation of chemical structure, and confirmation of chemical purity. Confirmation of hit reproducibility requires that the subset of library compounds designated as hits in the primary screen be identified, that samples of each of these be obtained from the library bank (a process often referred to as cherry picking ), and that these samples be retested, at least once but preferably multiple times, to determine if they reproducibly confer an inhibition percentage of the target enzyme 

In this chapter we have reviewed some of the basic biochemical considerations that must be taken into account in the design of assays for HTS purposes. We saw that activity measurements must be made during the initial velocity phase of the reaction progress curve to ensure the best chances of observing inhibition by library 

Copeland, R. A. (1994), Methods for Protein Analysis A Practical Guide to Laboratory Protocols, Chapman and Hall, New York. 

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