Your Christmas Screening Wishlist of 2014

With Christmas fast approaching, it’s time to take a look at the products that should be on everyone’s wishlist in the ideal screening laboratory.

High content screening (HCS)
High content screening is mainly used in target discovery, usually for the identification of suitable drug target proteins involved in the complex protein pathways of a disease. This a hotly contested wishlist, with many products capable of additional applications in flow cytometry through to imaging:

1. PHERAstar FS®, from BMG Labtech, is a high-throughput-screening (HTS) microplate reader. It provides the perfect solution for screening and assay development. The Pherastar is used in this study to universally screen kinase assays.

2. acumen® Cellista, from TTP Labtech, is a microplate-based laser scanning imaging cytometer designed to provide rapid, whole well, content-rich cytometric and image based analysis. In this article, it has been used to scan whole wells to enumerate fluorescent colonies in the development of 3D cell culture tumor models.

3. ImageXpress® Micro Widefield High Content Screening System, from Molecular Devices, is used in this application note to study the effectiveness of compounds for reducing hypertrophy in iCellR Cardiomyocytes, derived from human iPSCs.

4. Vi-CELL® XR Cell Viability Analyzer, from Beckman Coulter, automates the widely accepted trypan blue cell exclusion method through an image based cell viability analyzer, and is integrated with an automated liquid handling system. Read about the development of this method in this article.

5. Opera Phenix High Content Screening System, from PerkinElmer, is a high content screening system with applications in discriminating phenotypes and studying complex disease models, such as primary cells and microtissues.

6. iQue® Screener, from IntelliCyt, is a unique automated platform for high throughput and high content screening of suspended cells, beads, microbes, and mixtures. In this article, the iQue® Screener is shown to be effective in single cell analysis, excluding dead cells and eliminating any associated false positives.

High throughput screening (HTS)
High throughput screening is an automated method used later on in the drug discovery process for screening compounds against a potential target. As with HCS above, many technologies now have multiple functions, providing the ability to visualize interactions and analyze results within a single machine.

1. Synergy™ 2 Multi-Detection Microplate Reader, from BioTek, is optimized for screening assays including in the 1536-well read mode. This application note demonstrates a simple, homogeneous, non-radioactive, mix-and-read assay platform using the Synergy, for ADCC studies using luminescent detection and genetically engineered cells.

2. RapidFire 365 High-Throughput MS System, from Agilent, provides automated high-capacity sample analysis, a more successful approach to HTS of challenging drug targets and fast throughput for MS-based analyses like in vitro ADME assays.

3. CyBi®-FeliX, from Analytik Jena, offers maximum performance for the automation of cellular assays such as media exchange, cell seeding, ADME/Tox, transfection and cell-based screening. This article demonstrates the parallel implementation of several HTRF® cellular phospho-protein assays on the CyBi-FeliX liquid handling platform.

4. Biacore™ 4000, from GE Healthcare, offers a powerful solution for large-scale label-free interaction analysis, delivering high quality data without compromising on throughput. It is the ideal solution for antibody screening and selection, and small molecule drug discovery.