Miniaturized technologies for high-throughput drug screening enzymatic assays and diagnostics - A review

Drug discovery is a complex, multistep process, in which many challenges need to be overcome at each stage, from the discovery of a biomolecular target to the ensuring of the efficacy and safety of a compound in humans. Today's analytical methods allow tens of thousands of drug candidates to be screened for their ability to inhibit specific enzymes and the miniaturization of these approaches is highly desirable, accelerating the drug discovery process and reducing the associated costs. Herein, it is reviewed the miniaturized techniques currently used to evaluate enzymatic activity and inhibition giving special attention to microplate formats, microarrays, nanoarrays, and microfluidic technologies. It is, also, highlighted some of the characteristics and their abilities for potential uses are compared and discussed. In addition, the challenges of their applications in diagnosis, analysis, and therapy, which should help to improve the quality of healthcare globally are also pointed out. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.