Automation and High Throughput

The main methodologies needed for HT are automation and robotization. Most analytical methods, including sample preparation, can be adapted for this purpose. HT requires very large investment in instrumentation (and also in method development), but running costs (per sample analyzed) are much lower, mainly due to reduction of manual labor. A further advantage of automatic/robotic operation is that of finding qualified personnel, which is becoming more and more difficult. 

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Wide use of TLC-MS is hampered by the lack of commercially available interfaces. This also restricts automation and high throughput. Commercial direct insertion probes for scanning TLC-MS are available [811]. Compared with on-line LC-MS operation, TLC-MS hyphenation is much less highly developed. 

Advances in automation and high throughput screening techniques for rapid identification of lead compounds. 

Chayen, N. E. (2(X)6). Optimization techniques for automation and high throughput. In Methods in Molecular Biology, Macromolecular Crystallography Protocols, Vol. 1, Doubhe, S., ed. Humana Press, New Jersey, pp. 175-190. 

Currently, a number of immunochemical tests are commercially available in a kit format for many drugs. The 96-well plastic plate is one of the more commonly used formats of polystyrene and polyvinyl sold supports. It is well suited to automation and high throughput uses due to the wide variety of equipment that has been developed to simplify reagent transfer, rinsing steps, and interpretation of results. 

Trends in the crystallization process development in the pharmaceutical industry is to carry out measurements at a small scale in addition to utilizing automation and high throughput systems as exemplified by the use of automated metastable zone measurement for 1 mL samples. It is expected that the future batch crystallization recipes will be designed based on the data collected from much smaller scale crystallizers than what is currently used in industry. 

One interesting feature of such screens has increased the attractiveness of natural products to the pharmaceutical industry. The screens themselves are all highly automated and high throughput (upwards of 50,000 assay points per day in a number of cases). Because of this, the screening... 

Another area in which SLMs have interesting prospects is sample preparation in analytical chemistry. Unlike in other fields where a high active area is required, the new trends are toward miniaturization, which in the case of SLM is represented by the hquid-phase microextraction (LPME) method based on porous hollow fibers [231]. The other issues being addressed are to improve automation and high throughput of the analytical methods, in which the SLM system is used as an analyte enrichment method [167, 232-234]. Additionally, the improvement of selectivity of SLM extraction is one of the main areas of interest see the immuno-SLM method example described earher. Several improvements in this methodology have recently been reported [35, 36, 235-237]. 

The electric charge or polarity of cells (and cell contents) may also be used for manipulation and transportation within microfluidic devices. In contrast to mechanical methods, the use of electric field based approaches such as electrokinetics and dielectrophoresis are well-suited for microfluidics as they permit flexibility, controllability, automation and high-throughput capability. We note, however, that these kinds of techniques can produce undesired biological stress such as protein migration and clustering within the cells and in high fields, cells may... 

There are major efforts underway in instrument development to overcome these disadvantages and to lower the cost of ownership for mass spectrometers. We foresee major improvements during the next decade in the following areas (a) Robotics, automation, and high throughput. These technologies are aimed at dramatically increasing the efficiency of sample manipulation and analysis. 

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