Drug discovery frequently involves the screening of large numbers of candidate compounds.The High Throughput Screening Facility provides efficient high-throughput screening of chemical libraries. The facility has the following equipment and resources available for use by investigators:

• Robotics for Plate readers with luminescence, fluorescence, fluorescence polarization, time-resolved fluorescence, and absorbance detection capability.


• Multilabel Counter that measures wells from 96- and 384-well assay plates.


• Automated plate washers.


• Liquid handling system for transfer of compounds from library stock plates to assay plates.


• Automatic cell culture incubators.

Experimental Process:  Automation process of cell-based drug screening

1. Cell dispensing - 100ul dispense of assayable full-length replicon cell into 96 microplates A.(Total number of plate used is 30 at a time). After dispensing, microplates A are incubated for 12-24hrs. From the following step, automated system is used.


2. Chemical library dispensing - 1 ul dispense of DMSO-resolved chemicals from chemical library plate (96 well format) into the incubated microplates A. After dispensing chemicals, 96 microplates are moved to Cytomat (CO2 incubator) and incubated for 48hrs.


3. Media transfer for cytotoxicity assay and cell lysis for renillar luciferase assay - 10ul of cell media is transferred to another 96 microplates B.  The rest of media in 96 microplates A is removed and washed using WellWasher. 40ul of passive lysis buffer is injected to each well of 96 microplates A. Cytotoxicity assay - microplates B with cell media is moved to Victor (luminometer) and luminescence is measured. Renilla luciferase assay - microplates A with cell lysate is moved to Victor (luminometer) and luminescence is measured.

Note: 96-well plate format and 384-well plate format both are selectable. Using 384 well plates, only one injector in Multilabel counter can be used.

Capacity/ Performance: Base on the above experiment procedure, about 6000 samples can be processed within one week (5 working days) using 96-well plate (approximate 60 plates).

Applications: ※ Each machine can be used separately in specific purpose according to its application. ※ Non-cell-based screening: enzyme or particular substrates based assay system. Detail experiment process need to be discussed with operator. ※ 96-well plate format and 384-well plate format both are selectable. ※ Big quantity and small quantity of samples both can be processed.