A new method to determine the metabolic effects on cells that have been treated with candidate drugs is published online this week in Nature Communications. The method may aid the characterisation and development of many new drugs. Giovanni Paternostro and co-workers developed a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) based high throughput screen to assess the metabolic effects of treating mammalian cells with drug-like molecules. As metabolism is altered in many diseases, monitoring changes in metabolism during treatment could help to assess treatment efficacy and aid drug development. Although the technique outlined in this study was validated with a library of known kinase inhibitors, future work may see the method developed for use in drug discovery efforts.