title: An assessment of the utility of the yeast GreenScreen assay in pharmaceutical screening.
abstract: In this paper we describe an initial reproducibility study of 12 proprietary compounds followed by the assessment of 51 marketed pharmaceuticals and, lastly, a summary of the data so far from 2698 proprietary compounds from the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) compound library, in the yeast GreenScreen assay (GSA). In this assay, a reporter system in the yeast cells employs the DNA damage inducible promoter of the RAD54 gene, fused to the extremely stable green fluorescent protein (GFP). The assay proved to be very robust, the Excel templates provided by Gentronix with the assay interfaced well with in-house J&J systems with little adaptation, the assay was very rapid to perform and used very little compound. The results confirm previous work which suggests that the yeast GSA detects different classes of genotoxic compounds to the Ames assay and as a result can help screen out important genotoxic compounds at the pre-regulatory test phase that are missed by Ames-test-based screens alone. A combination of SAR evaluation of genotoxicity plus an Ames-test-based screen and the GSA provides a powerful pre-regulatory test battery to aid in the selection of successful drug candidates.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Jackson's Mill, Manchester M60 1QD, UK.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Van Gompel
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Woestenborghs
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Beerens
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mackie
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Cahill
authors.forename: A W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Knight
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Billinton
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Tweats
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Walmsley
mesh_terms: D001681:Biological Assay / Q000379:methods*; D015197:Carcinogenicity Tests / Q000379:methods*; D002273:Carcinogens / Q000494:pharmacology; D002452:Cell Count; D004249:DNA Damage / Q000187:drug effects; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical / Q000379:methods*; D017930:Genes, Reporter / Q000235:genetics; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D009152:Mutagenicity Tests / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000187:drug effects / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D002273:Carcinogens; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins