Microarray Methods for Drug Discovery

The postgenomic era presents a multitude of challenges for scientists in all areas of science. The information overload from new discoveries in genomics and proteomics highlight how little we really know about the functioning of a cell. The advent of Next-Generation Sequencing technologies promises to make our genetic blueprint available to the common man. The availability of the plethora of biological information has lead to the devel- ment of new areas of science and the coining of new "omics" terms including transcr- tomics, methylomics, toxicogenomics, pharmacogenomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and so on. Remarkable research is being conducted to understand the various aspects of human health and how processes like histone modifcations, promoter usage, alternative splicing, posttranscriptional, and posttranslational modifcations contribute to disease. The advent of systems biology has unifed chemists and biochemists alike in the struggle to eradicate or treat human disease. Microarrays have blossomed into a fast developing and cutting-edge technology that promises to become a major component of personalized medicine.
The 1990s witnessed a boom in many areas including genome sequencing, combinatorial chemistry, and c- puters, all of which have contributed to the development of microarray technology from its infancy into a mature tool. The growing potential of this tool is evident from the n- ber of publications since 1991 when Fodor et al. of Affymax (now Affymetrix) frst described the microarray prototype.