The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT has adopted Genedata Screener for small-molecule screening, which is integral to the Institute's contribution to the Molecular Libraries and Imaging Initiative funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). This NIH programme for medical research, comprised of nine institutions, conducts high-throughput biological studies of diverse small molecules to advance new drug discoveries.
'We're screening upwards of 50 assays and analysing more than 20 million wells of screening data,' explained Dave DeCaprio, associate director of the Chemical Biology Platform at the Broad Institute. 'Our team evaluated a number of systems and found Genedata to enable the kind of massively high-throughput screening and high-quality data analyses that we need.'
DeCaprio's team is using Screener's Assay Analyzer and Condoseo modules. Providing analysis from a single plate to an entire screening campaign, Assay Analyzer captures data from diverse plate readers and processes them based on predefined business rules. Condoseo fits thousands of dose-response curves within minutes for efficient IC50 determination in validation and assay panel screens. According to DeCaprio, screening campaigns that once took several weeks to execute can now be done in days, due in large part to Screener's ease-of-use, advanced visualisation, and statistical rigour.
'Screener's interactive visualisation capabilities enable our screeners to analyse their own data, eliminating the need for them to involve a separate informatics group,' said DeCaprio. 'Now, our informatics group can focus on more strategic issues while screeners use their time more efficiently without having to shift between projects. Moreover, Genedata's high-quality data analyses and the confidence we have in those data enable us to focus on meta data analyses. Now, we focus on the larger issues aimed at designing new compound libraries and applying them in new kinds of biology.'
