NIH TAKES TO ACUMEN EXPLORER - TTP LabTech allows NIH to match high content with high throughput

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) has announced data showing the effectiveness of TTP LabTech’s Acumen Explorer™ for high content screening at high throughput. This exciting development was carried out as part of the NCGC’s unique quantitative HTS (qHTS) programme.

The NCGC is at the cutting edge of small molecule screening, running 50-70% of assays in a cellular format. The work involves extensive screening of the genome and data produced can be accessed by the entire research community via a public database (http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), so reliability of results is paramount. The NCGC’s qHTS programme assays multiple concentrations of each compound and generates hundreds of thousands of concentration-effect relationships from primary screening. Consequently, there is a significant increase in wells screened over traditional single point testing, to a magnitude of 7- to 15-fold. Therefore, a truly high throughput automated system for screening 1536 well plates was essential.

The NCGC has integrated TTP LabTech’s Acumen Explorer laser-scanning cytometer into its major screening system from Kalypsys, Inc. Here it will be used for population distribution analysis of cells in microplates, initially providing reporter gene analysis.

The Acumen Explorer is a laser scanning rather than image acquisition system. Subsequent analysis means that data files are tiny – essential in such a high throughput system. Laser scanning and a wide field of view makes the Acumen Explorer capable of generating 300,000 data points in 24 hours working in a 1536 well format.