A well-designed screening cascade is essential for distinguishing high-quality, optimisable hits from compounds or contaminants that act via undesirable mechanisms.

This poster discusses the use of a Pan-Assay Interference (PAINS) library to enhance high-throughput screening (HTS) outcomes for drug discovery within the European Lead Factory.

It illustrates, with examples, how understanding the likely mechanisms of false positives before screening informs the design of the hit triage, thus increasing the likelihood of discovering optimisable chemical matter and reducing wasted resources.