To prove the importance of the JAK pathway, someone needed to discover a compound to test the hypothesis that inhibiting the JAK enzyme was of value in treating disease.

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When Epiphany Biosciences, a tiny San Francisco drug developer, was looking for a hepatitis C antiviral compound to test in the lab, it could have saved a few thousand bucks by hiring test tube drones from India.

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Researchers surf this molecular ocean using ultrafast chemical screeners that can test a compound on millions of cells per day.

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In test tubes the compound destroyed tumor cells.

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And though the company earlier had spurned a biotech firm's proposal to jointly study Muckle-Wells, Wright convinced his bosses that the obscure disorder was the perfect test-bed for the new compound.

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Researchers can only use dead cells or pieces of a cell and can only test for one response at a time, such as enzyme activity or the binding of a compound to a receptor.

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