Interpreting pharmaceutical screening test results

Abstract

In the pharmaceutical industry, compounds are tested for activity against
a disease target. In a High Throughput Assay (HTA), each compound is
tested at a single concentration. In an IC50 test, a compound is tested
at a range of concentrations. Sometimes there are discrepancies between
the results of these tests and the Study Group was asked to model this.
Rather than assume normally distributed errors in the percentage effect,
the Study Group proposed a model in which there are also probabilities
p and q of a test erroneously indicating very low or high activity. The
parameters p and q can be estimated from the data, and then can be
used in the design of testing procedures.