High-throughput screening automation

Schmid, L Sattler, L Grabley, S. Thiericke, R. Natural Products in High Throughput Screening Automated High-Quahty Sample Preparation, J. Biomol. Screening 4(1), 15-25 (1999). 

High-throughput screening automation exists at a variety of levels, from manual to semi-automated to fully automated turnkey systems (83). However, the types of equipment tend to be similar, and the way in which the screening process is integrated dictates the level of automation. For a brief discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of automated platforms versus workstations, see refs. 84 and 85. 

All the high-throughput screening automation platforms tend to have the same limited number of basic operations a method moving around microplates, dispensing liquids, a series of detectors, and incubators. The methods... 

High-throughput screening of molecular catalysts using automated liquid handling, injection and microdevices, Ghimia 56, 11 (2002) 621-626. 

Keywords Assay development, Automation, Data management, High throughput screening, Statistics... 

Hoogenboom, R., Meier, M.A.R. and Schubert, U.S. (2003) Combinatorial methods, automated synthesis and high-throughput screening in polymer research past and present. Macro-mol. Rapid Commun., 24, 16. 

However, many recent instruments are still not considered satisfactory, since professional developers in the field of high-throughput screening (HTS) want to use the full performance of the latest generation of robots and computers for automation. This results in new instrumental developments, like the possibility of reading not only 96, but 384 or even 1536 wells plates as well as DNA chips, very rapidly (in a minute or so) and repeatedly without any mechanical failures. Hence, in the eyes of company scientists developing new assays, many present-day instruments still correspond to an intermediate stage of development. For research laboratory scientists, on the other hand, the actual equipment offers excellent performance. 

Fligge, T.A. and Schuler, A. 2006. Integration of a rapid automated solubility classification into early validation of hits obtained by high throughput screening. J. Pharm. Biomed. Anal. 42 449. 

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