Monoamine transporters regulate the concentration of neurotransmitters in the synapse following neurotransmission and are very important drug targets in the pharmaceutical industry. Because of the labor-intensive nature of functional uptake assays using radioactive substrates, high-throughput screening for monoamine transporter inhibitors has been limited to radioligand binding assays. In this article, the authors describe the development of a 384-well, high-throughput functional screening assay for norepinephrine transporter inhibitors using the FLIPRTetra and a recently identified fluorescent substrate, 4-(4-dimethylaminostyryl)- N-methyl-pyridinium (ASP+). (Journal of Biomolecular Screening 2007:436-441)
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