Effect of Liquid Handling Quality Control on Biological Assay Performance

Molecules from a high throughput screening (HTS) campaign are often selected for further development after a single interrogation. HTS groups are also constantly challenged with improving efficiency by incorporating new technologies and complex biology. Hence, in order to obtain promising candidates, high quality assays are required. Assay variability is an important quality attribute and is a combination of liquid handling, biological and random variability. Liquid handling variability is often underappreciated, yet can have a huge impact on the outcome of an assay. Many laboratories rely on only precision to estimate the quality of the liquid handling. Optimization of liquid handling is so critical to improve the assay’s performance that precision and accuracy must both be assessed. This study was designed to examine (1) liquid handling quality control (QC) tools and (2) the effect of liquid handling variability on a model biological assay.