Scottish Hit Discovery Facility

The Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) at the University of Dundee is a fully integrated drug discovery operation based within a world class life sciences research environment. Its remit is to complement biopharma activities by tackling both neglected diseases (trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis and malaria) and early stage small molecule validation of novel targets and mechanisms across a range of potential therapeutics areas.
 
SULSA partners can access DDU screening capabilities through collaboration with the Scottish Hit Discovery Facility. The SHDF specialises in medium and high throughout screening of small molecule libraries against both molecular target and cell-based assays providing quality controlled, lead-like start points for medicinal chemistry programmes. The facility comprises purpose designed laboratories with industry standard equipment and software including a comprehensive suite of liquid handling instruments and a fully automated cellular screening workstation with on-line cell incubators providing a sterile environment for seamless processing of culture plates. All standard screening technology outputs for both isolated target and cell-based screening including all forms of fluorescence output, AlphascreenTM, radiometric, luminescence and automated fluorescence microscopy are represented in the facility.
 
The current screening capabilities of the unit are based around a series of compound sets amounting to a total of >90,000 compounds. These include known bioactive sets, gene family or biology focused sets and diversity sets. The large volume of data generated is managed within a secure, queryable database using a combination of purpose designed tools linking biological data to compound structure.
 
The SULSA Translational Biology Theme holds a fund, available to all SULSA partner institutions, to support running costs for small molecule screening projects. For further information about this fund click here.
 
Information about accessing SHDF capabilities can be found on the DDU website.