Phenotypic Screening does not rely on the previously established knowledge of a specific drug target in diseases, unlike conventional target-based drug screening which has been extensively used in the pharmaceutical industry. Target-based approach is optimized for the development of best-in-class drugs using fast-follower strategy. can be used for In contrast, phenotype-based drug discovery has been known as an unbiased approach ideal for the first-in-class therapeutics. This approach starts with disease-related phenotypic screening on the basis of physiologically relevant biological systems or cellular signaling pathways, and phenotypic screening is directly interrogated to the identification of biologically active drug candidates. Even with the high probability to identify first-in-class therapeutics, the importance and usefulness of phenotype-based approach has been challenged in comparison with target-based approach, because phenotype-based drug discovery requires vigorous and time-consuming hit validation and target deconvolution. However, the recent advances allow new tools for cell-based phenotypic screening to identify drug candidates as well as for proteomics/genomics to understand the mode of action (MOA) of identified compounds.

Phenotypic screening has been gaining more attention because of the potentials to address the incompletely understood complexity of diseases and to deliver first‑in-class therapeutics. Prof. Seung Bum PARK’s chemical biology laboratory at Seoul National University and SPARK Biopharma, Inc. have been dedicated to the development of new technologies to facilitate the process of phenotype-based drug discovery. SPARK Biopharma, Inc. pursues the phenotype-based drug discovery of first-in-class therapeutics. SPARK Biopharma is confident that we can facilitate the process of phenotype-based drug discovery with innovative preprietary research tools for hit validation and target deconvolution such as pDOS library, Seoul-Fluor, and FITGE/TS-FITGE. We have been working on designing phenotypic screening assay which is relevant to the diseases of interest with disease-relevant stimuli and read-outs in order to identify drug candidates.