Establishment of a fully automatized microfluidic platform for the screening and characterization of novel Hepatitis B virus capsid assembly modulators

Identifier:  TDX:4173

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX4173

Authors:  Vermes, Tamás

Abstract:
Drug Discovery as known today faces major challenges due to the constant decrease of earnings per drug given the decrease in new FDA approvements combined with the steadily rising development costs and time. Integrated microfluidic screening platforms emerged as possible solutions by accelerating the hit-to-lead development cycle and reducing time and cost requirements. The VIRO-FLOW project aims at the fast and efficient identification of novel curative agents for the Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), integrating the advantages of continuous flow chemistry with in vitro microfluidic bioassay technologies. During the present thesis a microfluidic system was built, applying automatized modular devices. Evaluation protocols were written for the fluorescence and reflection data, allowing the Z´-factor calculation, standard deviations, dilution curves, and half‐maximal effective concentrations (EC50) values. HBV core protein (HBc) was selected as primary target due to the ongoing demand for a functional cure to reduce the economic and social challenges imposed by the chronic disease