Sanford-Burnham's Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics Using Genedata Screener
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Genedata, a leading provider of advanced software solutions for drug discovery and life science research, today announced that Genedata Screener® is in full production at the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. The Conrad Prebys Center, a premier academic facility for chemical probe and drug discovery, conducts extensive High-Content Screening (HCS) and High-Throughput Screening (HTS) at two sites of operation (La Jolla, CA and Lake Nona in Orlando, FL). Facility-wide, Genedata Screener is the standard platform for all screening campaigns from libraries totaling nearly one million chemical compounds and natural products.
"To find more sophisticated ways to build a drug pipeline, we wanted to advance our research capabilities from an informatics perspective," noted Dr. Christian Hassig, director of Drug Discovery at the Conrad Prebys Center. "Genedata Screener has helped us build an advanced IT infrastructure."
Accessing Unexplored Biology
"Screener helps us to access unexplored biology that can't be examined any other way," continued Hassig. "It enables our scientists to better process HCS and HTS data and identifies potentially valuable hits that may otherwise be lost. Overall, Screener helps us determine the best datasets for hit selection, which is a huge differentiator for us."
Compatible with all leading HCS instruments and image management systems, Genedata Screener for HCS covers the complete HCS data analysis workflow from cell-level data to final campaign results. It is used on all HCS projects at the Conrad Prebys Center, which is home to three major compound libraries, including the collections from Molecular Libraries Probe Production Centers Network (364,000 compounds), Sanford-Burnham's collection (325,000 compounds), and the National Cancer Institute's Natural Product Extraction collection (150,000 compounds), as well as numerous small molecule specialty collections.
"Genedata Screener improves the quality of our data analysis," said Dr. Susanne Heynen-Genel, director of the HCS Core Facility at the Conrad Prebys Center, which provides assay development and screening services on imaging-compatible microtiter plates. She cites that "with Genedata Screener, we can link image displays to scatter plots, select outliers from scatter plots, easily identify and weed-out artifacts, and simultaneously handle multiple parameters in a single window." Capabilities such as these eliminate tedious manual handling of single plates and the lag time traditionally experienced when accessing different systems and files. "Genedata brings our data analysis to a new level and gives us a lot of confidence in the final data we deliver to investigators," continued Heynen-Genel.
The Conrad Prebys Center's Lake Nona, Orlando facility for HTS conducts chemical library screening of biological targets to help in selecting and implementing suitable biochemical or cellular assays. Monthly, the Lake Nona facility typically handles 2 to 3 HTS campaigns of more than 350,000 compounds each.
"Genedata Screener has become part of our daily workflow," commented Dr. Ying Su, director of Cheminformatics and HTS Informatics at the Conrad Prebys Center. "Prior to Genedata Screener, we ran plate-by-plate analysis, which is not only time-consuming, but makes it difficult to detect systematic errors. With Genedata, we have an overview of the hit map for each plate and are effectively reducing false-negatives. I believe Screener is the leading software for HTS data handling."
"We are excited about our collaboration with Sanford-Burnham, which is at the cutting edge in discovering molecular causes of diseases and devising therapies to address them," said Dr. Othmar Pfannes, CEO of Genedata. "The depth and breadth of their HCS and HTS campaigns underscores the value Genedata Screener brings to organizations looking at a wide variety of technologies and workflows. We will continue to advance Screener's capabilities to support HCS and other innovative technologies that enable collaborative and pioneering research."
