One of the present bottlenecks in drug discovery is in efficiently identifying drug targets for additional research. By employing bioassays in automated format, the characterization of a large number of drug targets can be streamlined. Standardized bioassays that can faithfully replicate biological reactions and generate informative data are essential for successfully performing high-throughput screening (HTS). The development of new technologies in functional genomics and proteomics has facilitated the discovery of an ever-increasing number of drug targets. These advances, together with high-throughput technologies for screening large compound libraries and sophisticated bioinformatics platforms, have resulted in an abundance of promising early-stage drug candidates. The investigation of end-user needs in Bioassays can be leveraged across several product categories with the goals of developing better products and expanding market penetration. To this end, the survey data has been placed in context by cross-tabulating it with the responses to an initial 14-question survey designed to provide baseline data on the nature of the respondent's drug discovery research. Included in these cross-tabulations are: the stage of research, type of research, disease targets, biological processes studied, and other related products and services used regularly. The results of the seven surveys conducted for this unique series of reports clearly show that past distinctions between the stages of drug discovery are diminishing. Bioassays is structured to reflect the market's integration, while highlighting end-user problems that represent exciting market opportunities for life science suppliers. Report Highlights Along with a comprehensive overview of significant findings, Bioassays contains detailed charts and graphs depicting the answers to all 34 survey questions and over 20 cross-tabulations. Below is a glimpse of the key findings derived from a few of the survey questions. • 40% of the respondents claim that their use of in vitro protein assays will increase over the next 12 months. (Question 10)
• The majority (58%) of respondents report that "cost of assay kits and/or reagents" is an operational problem that they have encountered when using in vitro protein assays. (Question 14)
• Only 1% of respondents expect their use of cell-based assays to decrease over the next 12 months. (Question 22)
• "Variable performance with different cell types" (28%) is the most significant performance limitation experienced by a respondent's lab/group when using cell-based assays. (Question 25)
• Amersham Biosciences (12%) was the company most frequently mentioned when the respondents were asked which company/supplier comes to mind when they think of bioassays. (Question 29) (Electronic copy also includes 1 print copy)
| 
