Things still not going according to plan …

I ended last time saying Shubhash had saved the day by finding a better virus stock and growing up some more cells for me. Sadly, this did not work – still no expression. So we tried halving the amount of virus used, as using too much can infect too many cells leaving not enough making Read More …

Determining the nanoBRET IC50 values of 30 legacy ACVR1/ALK2 inhibitors

A large number of ACVR1/ALK2 inhibitors were previously synthesised by Paul Brenner’s team (Target Discovery Center, University of Oxford) for the purpose of treating Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP). Although these compounds were not designed with blood-brain-barrier permeability in mind, they can serve as good bench-marks for my cellular assays. Therefore, 30 of these legacy compounds Read More …

Determining the IC50 of M4K1062 with ACVR1/ALK2-NanoLuc and different concentrations of Tracer-6908

The EC50 of Tracer-6908 with ACVR1-c-nanoLuc and ideal conditions for the target engagement assay have been determined in a previous experiment. However, it is still necessary to verify that the IC50 values determined in the assay are closed enough approximation to the actual IC50 values of the compounds. If the IC50 values are strongly influenced Read More …

CLK2 inhibitor candidates

In my previous post, I presented different CLK2 inhibitors (https://openlabnotebooks.org/clk-chemical-probe/), including structures, and IC50 curves that were generated using a cell target engagement assay called NanoBRET. My colleagues Carrow Wells and Julie Pickett generated these data. The BRET of NanoBRET stands for bioluminescence resonance energy transfer, and it is an in-vitro quantitative technique to identify Read More …

Screening compounds of interest against USP5 Zf-UBD with a surface plasmon resonance assay

It’s been a busy couple of weeks in and out of the lab for me which is why it’s been some time since my last post. I previously identified small molecule compounds of interest using a 19F NMR spectroscopy assay. To quantify and validate these small molecule compounds, I used a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) Read More …

The process of HDAC11 Assay Development: Effect of DMSO

For the purpose of compound library screenings, the compounds would be made available in DMSO and thus, when they would be incubated with the protein, the protein solution will now contain DMSO as well. It is important to determine the concentration of DMSO that could be tolerated by the protein such that the protein stays Read More …