Discovering new drugs is a long and expensive process – chemical compounds that dupe screening tools make it even harder

Pan-assay interference compounds, or PAINS, often come up as false positives when researchers screen for potential drug candidates. unol/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Modern drug discovery is an expensive and complicated process. Hundreds of scientists and at least a decade are often required to produce a single medicine. One of the most critical steps in this process is the first one – identifying new chemical compounds that could be developed into new medicines.

Researchers rely heavily on bioassays to identify potential drug candidates. These tests measure a compound’s ability to act on a biological target of interest. Candidates that show up as a “hit” by interacting with a target of interest (such as fitting into a binding site on the target) move on to further study and development. Advances in technology called high-throughput screening have allowed researchers to run thousands of compounds through bioassays in a short time, significantly streamlining the process.