Improving the Validity of HT Screening Assays  

Research by North Carolina State University’s Dr. Nathaniel Hentz has shown that the volumes dispensed duringdrug screening programs can have a significant effect on the results obtained by assay screens. Any error made during these deliveries affects the concentration of the drug candidate and can lead to misleading data about compound activity being generated. Because DMSO has very different physical properties than water it behaves differently when handled by air-displacement pipettors or acoustic droplet ejectors, creating the need for a solvent-specific volume verification method.

Artel now has 100% DMSO-based Sample Solutions for use with the MVS® Multichannel Verification System, that dramatically simplify the volume verification process for users of sub-microliter liquid handling instruments, and will help them ensure the validity of their high-throughput screening (HTS) assay results.

Celgene’s Jason Haelewyn, a long-time user of the MVS, has been waiting expectantly for this product to be released: “Our laboratory has used the Artel MVS for the last five years to validate volume transfers for our automated liquid handling devices. While the MVS has proved valuable as an easy to use aqueous liquid volume validation, most of our liquid transfers involve moving our compound library which is solvated in DMSO. We are eagerly looking forward to the new DMSO-based Sample Solutions to make it even easier to validate the liquid transfers of DMSO solutions on our systems.”

The new solutions will be on display at Pittcon 2013