Assays
“There’s a big variation, which depends on the complexity of the assay, biochemical or cell-based, whether there is already an assay in the literature or commercially available. Assay development time has decreased over the past two years due to the availability of commercial assays.”
HTS laboratory
Roadblocks preventing further improvement
Despite the improvements made in assay devel- opment, some roadblocks continue to present challenges as summarised in Figure 3. Generating reagents, both proteins and cell lines, continues to be the most significant road- block to further improvements in assay develop- ment times (44%). Outsourcing reagent produc- tion has had a beneficial impact on development time. Several directors mention they prefer to purchase these reagents and find assay develop- ment is inhibited if they are unable to find com- mercially available products.
The assays themselves sometimes cause trouble,
Capacity and cost 10%
© HighTech Business Decisions
Communication outside HTS lab 8%
Figure 3: Roadblocks preventing faster assay development
Lack of high quality reagents and cell lines 44%
Novel or complex targets 21%
Assays robust enough for HTS 17%
with 21% of directors reporting that novel or com- plex targets take more time, and 17% reporting that developing assays robust enough for an auto- mated system is problematic. The challenge is to fulfill all criteria: low signal-to-noise ratio, uniform signal across the entire plate, and reproducibility.
New Cell-based Assay Plate Reader, FDSS/µCELL
The FDSS/µCELL is a new compact and cost-effective plate reader for fluorescent kinetic cell-based assays.
Features • 96/384 well dispensing • All wells dispensed simultaneously • Fast data acquisition -
uses Hamamatsu CCD camera technology
• Whole plate imaging • Agonist/Antagonist assays with tip washing • Compact • Simple to use
Applications • Intracellular ion measurement (Ca2+, fluo-3/-4) • Membrane potential (FMP)
www.sales.hamamatsu.com/info/fdss/ Freephone: Europe 00 800 800 800 88, USA 1-800 524 0504
Drug Discovery World Summer 2010
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