Screening of soluble chemical compounds for their pharmacological properties utilizing transponders

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The invention is an improvement to a bioassay for soluble compounds.
The invention involves the coating of the transponder with a polymer layer that contains the desired chemical compound.
The transponder is also electronically encoded with a serial number that identifies the compound.
To assay the compound, the coated transponder is immersed in a buffer in a vessel (e.
g.
test tube or a well of a microtiter plate).
The buffer composition is adjusted such that (1) the coating of the transponder can be promptly dissolved and the chemical compound of interest brought into solution, and (2) the assay can be performed in the same solution.
The receptor is added to the vessel, and the assay performed using essentially the same steps which would be used in the assay configured for the soluble chemical compound.
The coating of transponders is done individually for different soluble compounds in the chemical library.
Different compounds are assigned different identification numbers encoded on the transponders.
The act of decoding the transponder unmistakably identifies one compound out of a set of compounds.
Chemical libraries of different sizes, from 10 compounds to millions of compounds and more, can benefit from the invention.
In the last step of the assay, the vessels which are considered positive as a result of the desired interaction of the compound with the receptor are identified.
The transponders are removed from the vessels, and electronically decoded.
The decoding gives the identification number of the compound, and this number is then used to positively identify the compound.
The compound(s) is subjected to further biochemical testing.
The invention is also a new method for storage of chemical compounds.
Rather than traditionally storing the compounds as powder, liquid or solids, the compound is stored as a coating on the transponder.
The benefit is that different compounds in the above new form (i.
e.
coated on the transponder) can be mixed and moved from one vessel to another without loosing the track for the identity of the compounds