The theoretical foundation for safety panel services is based on the publication "Reducing safety-related drug attrition: The use of in vitro pharmacological profiling" from Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (2012). This publication highlights the importance of early identification of off-target activities to reduce late-stage attrition in drug development. Furthermore, "The state of the art in secondary pharmacology and its impact on the safety of new medicines" from Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (2024) summarizes insights from 18 major pharmaceutical companies, highlighting the limitations of binding-only assays and supports the adoption of functional, dose–response–based profiling to better predict off-target risks and inform safer drug development decisions.

✅ Binding ≠ true activity — often overestimates hits

✅ Functional assays reduce false positives and unnecessary follow-up

✅ Better at detecting allosteric or agonist effects, especially for ion channels

✅ Relying on binding alone risks missing key liabilities or rejecting good compounds