Screening In-Depth Focus 2017

• Clinically-oriented phenotypic screening: understanding and exploiting the dynamic nature of the cancer cell phenotype
  Understanding the cancer cell phenotype is central to both cancer diagnosis and treatment. Discrete molecular signatures among cancer phenotypes underpin patient stratification, while rapid methods for detailed phenotyping in the clinic (via liquid biopsies and tumour imaging) enable the delivery of personalised, effective precision medicines to the cancer patient. David Bailey and Fredrik Svensson describe how emerging data are defining molecular phenotypes among specific cancer cell lineages, and how these can be used in phenotypic screening to discover and profile drugs which modulate them.
• 3-D bioprinted tissues as disease-in-a-dish models for drug screening
  More than 90% of drugs that enter clinical evaluation fail to reach approval because of lack of efficacy or unexpected toxicity. This failure rate is in large part due to the use of overly simplistic in vitro cell-based assays and animal models with limited predictive value. Marc Ferrer and Anton Simeonov discuss the use of 3-D tissue models for drug screening and, in particular, the use of 3-D bioprinting to fabricate such tissues from the perspective of a laboratory focused on drug screening and discovery.