There has always been some tension between proponents of hypothesis-driven and discovery-driven research in the broad field of life sciences. Academic research has been primarily focused on hypothesis-driven research. However, the success of the human genome project, a discovery-driven research approach, has opened the door to adding other types of discovery-driven research to a continuum of research approaches. In contrast, drug discovery research in the pharmaceutical industry has embraced discovery-driven research for many years. A good example has been the discovery of active compounds...

High content screening (HCS) was developed by Cellomics Inc. in the mid-1990s to address the need for a platform that could be used in the discovery-driven research and development required to understand the functions of genes and gene products at the level of the cell. High Content Screening: A Powerful Approach to Systems Cell Biology and Drug Discovery discusses its use as a high throughput platform to understand the functions of genes, RNA, proteins, and other cellular constituents at the level of the living cell.
High Content Screening is assembled to assist both existing users of...