Dr akwasi minta
Dr. Minta dedicated this book to the late 2008 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Roger Tsien because with Dr. Greg Gyrynkiewicz, Roger and himself, they introduced the modern fluorescent Ion (Ca2+, Na+, K+) indicators in the mid-1980s that started High Throughput Screening in Drug discovery today.
High Throughput Screening is an automatic process that rapidly tests large samples or compounds for biological activity at the cellular and molecular levels. Now a million compounds can be tested in 3 months and involves target identification, assay development, analysis, and hit selection. The process generally involves developing tests or assays where potential compounds are made to bind with proteins, causing visible changes that can be automatically read by a sensor – usually light emission by a FLUOROPHORE in the reaction mixture. The ions Calcium, Sodium, and Potassium play a crucial role in the primary target investigation, particularly when studying ion channels which are critical for many processes, and this represents a significant area of Drug Discovery.
HTS began in the early 1990s when a 96–well plate format was used to screen libraries of hundreds to thousands of compounds. Now it can be up to 3456 plates. Before the 1990s screening was done with:
He continued the Natural Products PhD research in Biosynthesis with Professor A.R Battersby at the University of Cambridge in the UK with studies on the mechanism of synthesis in vivo of the alkaloid, Hasubanonine, from a Japanese vine, Stephania japonica. He proceeded to do post-doctoral research with the synthesis of Cardiotonic steroids with Professor Karel Wiesner at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton N.B in Canada.
He did another research in the Enzymatic study of the mechanism of Methylation of S-Adenosyl Methionine at Rice University with Professor Ronald Parry in Houston. He got a call from the late Roger Tsien, the 2008 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, who was in the Department of Physiology in Cambridge, UK at the same time when the author was in the Department of Chemistry in Cambridge, in 1982 to collaborate in the creation of more fluorescent calcium indicators from his invention of synthetic calcium indicators. Specifically, he wanted a visible wavelength version of his invention. The collaboration resulted in the first visible wavelength fluorescent calcium indicators we called ‘Fluo’ from fluorescein and ‘Rhod’ from rhodamine. Together with other fluorescent calcium indicators called ‘Fura’ and ‘Indo’ made by colleague, Dr. Gregorz Grynkiewicz, modern fluorescent calcium indicators were born at the University of California Berkeley. He went to Molecular Probes in Eugene, Oregon, to commercialize them 1988. He came to the University of Texas at Austin as a research fellow in 1990, made two new indicators, and started a company, Teflabs, in 1992. He continued till 2018 when Mr. Francisco Conti acquired it as an Ion Indicators company, later called Ionbiosciences, where He was a research director till his retirement.