Resonant Waveguide Grating Biosensor for Whole-Cell GPCR Assays

Current drug discovery campaigns for G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) heavily rely on assay technologies that use artificial cell systems tailored to a point-of-contact readout and as a consequence are mostly pathway biased. Recently, we have developed label-free optical biosensor cellular assays that are capable of examining systems cell biology of endogenous receptors and systems cell pharmacology of GPCR ligands in both physiologically and disease relevant environments. We have shown that these biosensor assays enable high-throughput screening of pathway-biased ligands acting on endogenous β₂ -adrenergic receptor in cells. These biosensor cellular assays hold the potential to reduce attrition rates in drug discovery and development process.