Posters

High quality assays are required in order to take forward potential drugs, post screening. Therefore the liquid handling must be accurate and precise, as demonstrated in this experiment.

Increasing costs of chemical compounds and commonly used solvents has pushed high throughput screening labs towards lower working volumes, specifically in the nanoliter range. The ability to controllably dispense “known” nanoliter aliquots of samples is desired, which can readily be achieved using Pin Tools.

Assays can produce unexpected or failing results for a multitude of reasons. Variability may be introduced at any point within the assay process.

Recent studies have shown that an increasing number of drugs no longer on the market have negative effects on mitochondrial function in key organs such as the liver and heart. Therefore it is increasingly important to monitor the effects of lead compounds on mitochondrial function in relevant cell systems. The ability to incorporate a simple, rapid, multiplexed, predictive assay can make the detection of potential toxic effects easier to perform early on in the drug discovery process.

The Androgen Receptor (AR) is a member of the family of nuclear receptors responsive to steroid hormones. This poster aims to devise, validate and perform a preliminary automated HTS screening campaign to identify novel modulators of AR activity.

Since the end of the 1990’s, the pharmaceutical industry has seen an increased interest in biologics, especially in the therapeutic areas of oncology and inflammation. Here we present the automation of two assays for the characterization and selection of potent antibody drug candidates. Both assays rely on HTRF® detection. The first assay quantifies the binding affinity of antibodies to their target antigen, on live cells.

TNFa blocker biopharmaceuticals represent an important and successful class of protein drugs used in the treatment of several autoimmune diseases. Bioassays are indispensible tools in biopharmaceutical drug development and commercialization that are used to quantify biological activity and stability of drugs or drug candidates. The automation of these assays can serve to create an accurate, robust process which can allow the researcher to perform other more important functions.

Epigenetic processes are attracting considerable attention in drug discovery as their fundamental roles in controlling normal cell development and contributions to disease states become more clearly defined. This work combines a fluorescence-based assay with liquid handling and dispensing instrumentation and a multi-mode reader which can be used to monitor the biological activity of the histone methyltransferase (HMT) G9a, a model system.

Monitoring and quantifying cell signaling pathways is critical for understanding the behavior of cell processes and many disease states. Monitoring and quantifying cell signaling pathways is critical for understanding the behavior of cell processes and many disease states.