Book excerpt: Essential principles and practice of assay development The first comprehensive, integrated treatment of the subject, Assay Development: Fundamentals and Practices covers the essentials and techniques involved in carrying out an assay project in either a biotechnology/drug discovery setting or a platform setting. Rather than attempting comprehensive coverage of all assay development technologies, the book introduces the most widely used assay development technologies and illustrates the art of assay development through a few commonly encountered biological targets in assay development (e.g., proteases, kinases, ion channels, and G protein-coupled receptors). Just enough biological background for these biological targets is provided so that the reader can follow the logics of assay development. Chapters discuss: The basics of assay development, including foundational concepts and applications Commonly used instrumental methods for both biochemical assays and cell-based assays Assay strategies for protein binding and enzymatic activity Cell-based assays High-throughput screening An in-depth study of the now popular Caliper's off-chip kinase assay provides an instructive, real-world example of the assay development process.