scholarly journals Application of High-Throughput Flow Cytometry in Early Drug Discovery: An AstraZeneca Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 719-731
Author(s):  
Mei Ding ◽  
Roger Clark ◽  
Catherine Bardelle ◽  
Anna Backmark ◽  
Tyrrell Norris ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Flow Cytometry ◽  
Drug Discovery ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
Phenotypic Screening ◽  
Antibody Screening ◽  
Structure Activity ◽  
High Level ◽  
Early Drug

Flow cytometry is a powerful tool providing multiparametric analysis of single cells or particles. The introduction of faster plate-based sampling technologies on flow cytometers has transformed the technology into one that has become attractive for higher throughput drug discovery screening. This article describes AstraZeneca’s perspectives on the deployment and application of high-throughput flow cytometry (HTFC) platforms for small-molecule high-throughput screening (HTS), structure–activity relationship (SAR) and phenotypic screening, and antibody screening. We describe the overarching HTFC workflow, including the associated automation and data analysis, along with a high-level overview of our HTFC assay portfolio. We go on to discuss the practical challenges encountered and solutions adopted in the course of our deployment of HTFC, as well as future enhancements and expansion of the technology to new areas of drug discovery.

scholarly journals A Fully Automated High-Throughput Flow Cytometry Screening System Enabling Phenotypic Drug Discovery

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 697-707 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Joslin ◽  
James Gilligan ◽  
Paul Anderson ◽  
Catherine Garcia ◽  
Orzala Sharif ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Flow Cytometry ◽  
Drug Discovery ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Screening System ◽  
Preclinical Development ◽  
Drug Identification ◽  
Therapeutic Setting ◽  
Compound Libraries ◽  
Automated Platform

The goal of high-throughput screening is to enable screening of compound libraries in an automated manner to identify quality starting points for optimization. This often involves screening a large diversity of compounds in an assay that preserves a connection to the disease pathology. Phenotypic screening is a powerful tool for drug identification, in that assays can be run without prior understanding of the target and with primary cells that closely mimic the therapeutic setting. Advanced automation and high-content imaging have enabled many complex assays, but these are still relatively slow and low throughput. To address this limitation, we have developed an automated workflow that is dedicated to processing complex phenotypic assays for flow cytometry. The system can achieve a throughput of 50,000 wells per day, resulting in a fully automated platform that enables robust phenotypic drug discovery. Over the past 5 years, this screening system has been used for a variety of drug discovery programs, across many disease areas, with many molecules advancing quickly into preclinical development and into the clinic. This report will highlight a diversity of approaches that automated flow cytometry has enabled for phenotypic drug discovery.

scholarly journals Assay Establishment and Validation of a High-Throughput Screening Platform for Three-Dimensional Patient-Derived Colon Cancer Organoid Cultures

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 931-941 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Boehnke ◽  
Philip W. Iversen ◽  
Dirk Schumacher ◽  
María José Lallena ◽  
Rubén Haro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Colon Cancer ◽  
Drug Discovery ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Compound Screening ◽  
Organoid Cultures ◽  
Screening Platform ◽  
Disease Specific

The application of patient-derived three-dimensional culture systems as disease-specific drug sensitivity models has enormous potential to connect compound screening and clinical trials. However, the implementation of complex cell-based assay systems in drug discovery requires reliable and robust screening platforms. Here we describe the establishment of an automated platform in 384-well format for three-dimensional organoid cultures derived from colon cancer patients. Single cells were embedded in an extracellular matrix by an automated workflow and subsequently self-organized into organoid structures within 4 days of culture before being exposed to compound treatment. We performed validation of assay robustness and reproducibility via plate uniformity and replicate-experiment studies. After assay optimization, the patient-derived organoid platform passed all relevant validation criteria. In addition, we introduced a streamlined plate uniformity study to evaluate patient-derived colon cancer samples from different donors. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of using patient-derived tumor samples for high-throughput assays and their integration as disease-specific models in drug discovery.

scholarly journals RefCell: Multi-dimensional analysis of image-based high-throughput screens based on ‘typical cells’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Shen ◽  
Nard Kubben ◽  
Julián Candia ◽  
Alexandre V. Morozov ◽  
Tom Misteli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Analysis ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Single Cell Analysis ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
Premature Aging ◽  
Cellular Heterogeneity ◽  
High Level ◽  
High Throughput Screens ◽  
High Throughput Imaging

AbstractBackgroundImage-based high-throughput screening (HTS) reveals a high level of heterogeneity in single cells and multiple cellular states may be observed within a single population. Cutting-edge high-dimensional analysis methods are successful in characterizing cellular heterogeneity, but they suffer from the “curse of dimensionality” and non-standardized outputs.ResultsHere we introduce RefCell, a multi-dimensional analysis pipeline for image-based HTS that reproducibly captures cells with typical combinations of features in reference states, and uses these “typical cells” as a reference for classification and weighting of metrics. RefCell quantitatively assesses the heterogeneous deviations from typical behavior for each analyzed perturbation or sample.ConclusionsWe apply RefCell to the analysis of data from a high-throughput imaging screen of a library of 320 ubiquitin protein targeted siRNAs selected to gain insights into the mechanisms of premature aging (progeria). RefCell yields results comparable to a more complex clustering based single cell analysis method, which both reveal more potential hits than conventional average based analysis.

Upscaling and Automation of Electrophysiology: Toward High Throughput Screening in Ion Channel Drug Discovery

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
Margit Asmild ◽  
Nicholas Oswald ◽  
Karen M. Krzywkowski ◽  
Søren Friis ◽  
Rasmus B. Jacobsen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Ion Channel ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening

High-Throughput Affinity Selection Mass Spectrometry Using SAMDI-MS to Identify Small-Molecule Binders of the Human Rhinovirus 3C Protease

2021 ◽  
pp. 247255522110232
Author(s):  
Michael D. Scholle ◽  
Doug McLaughlin ◽  
Zachary A. Gurard-Levin
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Drug Discovery ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Human Rhinovirus ◽  
Binding Potential ◽  
Affinity Selection ◽  
Response Curves ◽  
Desorption Ionization ◽  
Self Assembled

Affinity selection mass spectrometry (ASMS) has emerged as a powerful high-throughput screening tool used in drug discovery to identify novel ligands against therapeutic targets. This report describes the first high-throughput screen using a novel self-assembled monolayer desorption ionization (SAMDI)–ASMS methodology to reveal ligands for the human rhinovirus 3C (HRV3C) protease. The approach combines self-assembled monolayers of alkanethiolates on gold with matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight (MALDI TOF) mass spectrometry (MS), a technique termed SAMDI-ASMS. The primary screen of more than 100,000 compounds in pools of 8 compounds per well was completed in less than 8 h, and informs on the binding potential and selectivity of each compound. Initial hits were confirmed in follow-up SAMDI-ASMS experiments in single-concentration and dose–response curves. The ligands identified by SAMDI-ASMS were further validated using differential scanning fluorimetry (DSF) and in functional protease assays against HRV3C and the related SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro enzyme. SAMDI-ASMS offers key benefits for drug discovery over traditional ASMS approaches, including the high-throughput workflow and readout, minimizing compound misbehavior by using smaller compound pools, and up to a 50-fold reduction in reagent consumption. The flexibility of this novel technology opens avenues for high-throughput ASMS assays of any target, thereby accelerating drug discovery for diverse diseases.

scholarly journals Development of a Robust High-Throughput Screening Platform for Inhibitors of the Striatal-Enriched Tyrosine Phosphatase (STEP)

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 4417
Author(s):  
Lester J Lambert ◽  
Stefan Grotegut ◽  
Maria Celeridad ◽  
Palak Gosalia ◽  
Laurent JS De Backer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drug Discovery ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
Tyrosine Kinases ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Kinase Inhibitors ◽  
Tyrosine Phosphatase ◽  
Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases ◽  
Synaptic Function ◽  
Label Free ◽  
Protein Tyrosine

Many human diseases are the result of abnormal expression or activation of protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) and protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs). Not surprisingly, more than 30 tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) are currently in clinical use and provide unique treatment options for many patients. PTPs on the other hand have long been regarded as “undruggable” and only recently have gained increased attention in drug discovery. Striatal-enriched tyrosine phosphatase (STEP) is a neuron-specific PTP that is overactive in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and fragile X syndrome. An emergent model suggests that the increase in STEP activity interferes with synaptic function and contributes to the characteristic cognitive and behavioral deficits present in these diseases. Prior efforts to generate STEP inhibitors with properties that warrant clinical development have largely failed. To identify novel STEP inhibitor scaffolds, we developed a biophysical, label-free high-throughput screening (HTS) platform based on the protein thermal shift (PTS) technology. In contrast to conventional HTS using STEP enzymatic assays, we found the PTS platform highly robust and capable of identifying true hits with confirmed STEP inhibitory activity and selectivity. This new platform promises to greatly advance STEP drug discovery and should be applicable to other PTP targets.

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