Cryopreservation of organotypic brain spheroid cultures.

The cryopreservation of hen and rat brain spheroids was investigated. Brain spheroid cultures were prepared from 7-day-old hen embryos or 16-day-old rat embryos, by using a rotation-mediated culture system. The spheroids were cryopreserved in medium containing 5-15% dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) and stored in liquid nitrogen, by using a two-stage cooling procedure.

In vitro preclinical lead optimisation technologies (PLOTs) in pharmaceutical development.

The explosion of genuine high throughput technologies has allowed large compound libraries to be screened with ever increasing biological specificity, exacerbating the problem of lead candidate selection for subsequent drug development. To avoid creating a bottleneck, compounds identified from the high throughput screens undergo lead optimisation, a medium-throughput screen which allows ranking in terms of their basic absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion (ADME) and toxicological properties. The historical role of the preclinical scientist in the drug discovery/development continuum has been to perform ADME and toxicology studies, simply to support the regulatory submission of lead candidates.