Editorial [Hot Topic: Electrodriven Detection/Separation Systems for Advanced Drug Discovery Schemes and Bioassay Technologies (Guest Editor: Grzegorz Bazylak)

Frustration currently observed in most of the pharmaceutical companies as a result of the high attriction rate of finally selected drug leads and optimized drug candidates would be also be related to challenges and limitations of available analytical protocols in the development of any new drug. For example, typical detection limits reported in the pharmaceutical literature are 10 ppm of the label-free analyte or a biological activity level of 1/1000 of the normal therapeutic dose. One of the intensively appearing and most promising solutions demonstrated recently to overcome these shortcomings is increasing the use of the non-optical analytical and screening platforms in drug discovery programmes based on integrated microfluidic and electrodriven phenomena along with acoustic resonance, field effect nanowires, microcantilevers or differential microcalorimetry approaches. Especially, application of electrodriven separation and detection systems in both small- and large-molecule hit therapeutics development, evaluation and confirmation issues should be extremely attractive. The list of advantages offered by this last mentioned combination of separation and detection methods is quite extensive, and primarily includes primary the extensive miniaturization potential, enlarged scope of substances for direct analysis, reduced costs, increased high-throughput and significantly extended high-content information capacity of the electrodriven hit-to-lead discovery assays compared to traditional optical methodologies. Examples of such practically implemented and robust electrodriven microanalytical schemes for drug discovery and bioassay technologies are illustrated in this special issue of Current Pharmaceutical Analysis, which also highlights some key advances in resolving of enrolled encumbrances revealed by these approached. The review by Lund and Parviz opening this special issue presents the set of most promising future-generation approaches, including also innovative electrodriven and electronic procedures, to enable fast DNA sequencing at the target price of 1000 USD per genome in 2014 year. Involvement of sophisticated synthetic methods in fabrication of nanotubes mimicking peptide nanopores and their further integration with a chip containing detectors has been also discussed in this paper. In addition, the minireview by Vander Heyden et al. deals with the use of microfluidic devices and chip-based systems employing variety of laser-induced fluorescence, electrochemical and mass spectrometry detection modes in a high-throughput screening and ultra-fast analysis of chiral pharmaceuticals in picomolar range to reduce attrition rate of drug leads. Similarly, Yu et al. describe the recent advances in electrodriven microfluidic chips protocols devoted to deciphering of variable drugprotein, drug-DNA and biomolecules involved in highly specific interactions and the determination of ADMET properties of drug candidates. These considerations are also continued in review by Nagels et al., which presents the advantages and limitations in construction concepts of miniaturized potentiometric sensors for the highly sensitive detection of neutral and/or charged biomolecules, poly-ionic molecules, living microorganisms and drug dissolution studies in hydrodynamic conditions. Since the availability of various electrochemical procedures today enables the sensitive and robust analysis of pharmaceutical dosage forms and biological fluids, the range of such dedicated applications in batch conditions were critically addressed by Ozkan in his review paper. Similarly, Hu et al. summarized recent trends, pitfalls and developments in use of voltammetric procedures for direct drug determination in static and flow conditions at broad concentration range of up to 10-12 M and of obtained biologically through meaningful analytical result.