The Benefits of Automation in High Throughput Screening

Drug discovery is a long and complex process that involves identifying druggable targets and developing safe therapies that can hit these targets without causing harmful side effects. Success in drug discovery is also time-dependent, as many laboratories and companies aim to generate a significant return on their investment by being the first to gain market approval to meet an urgent medical need.

However, drug discovery is a slow and expensive process with a very high attrition rate. It typically takes more than a decade and over $2B to get a drug to market (Fig. 1)¹. Given these challenges, researchers must stay at the forefront of technological advancements to accelerate drug discovery while reducing costs and remaining competitive.

Figure 1. The drug discovery process is long, expensive, and highly competitive. Researchers must remain aligned with the latest technology to improve their chances of success.

High throughput screening has emerged as a game-changing technology in drug discovery. It allows many potential drugs to be tested simultaneously, giving researchers who adopt high throughput screening approaches massive advantages over previous methods². However, high throughput screening only reaches its full potential when paired with technologies that facilitate accurate, fast, and simultaneous dispensing of reagents and test compounds.

Automated liquid handling processes have risen to meet this demand. With automation, high throughput screening can be performed with minimal input from researchers, allowing for more accuracy, faster turnaround times, and better chances of successful drug discovery, including in modern fields like synthetic biology.

What is High Throughput Screening?

High throughput screening is a methodology used to identify promising therapies by simultaneously testing large numbers (sometimes millions) of putative therapies for efficacy in a specific assay that indicates their ability to treat a particular disease. High throughput screening is a culmination of multidisciplinary knowledge, including biology, chemistry, engineering, robotics, and data science. High throughput screening allows researchers to rapidly screen large libraries of compounds to generate leads for further testing².

How Does Automation Power High Throughput Screening?

Automation significantly enhances several aspects of high throughput screening, which leads to faster turnaround times. These include:

Liquid Handling

High throughput screening experiments often involve huge libraries of test compounds, and each compound is generally tested at various concentrations. Without automation, preparing each compound manually and testing it in parallel would be impossible. Automation in liquid handling also helps to eliminate variables in testing runs by ensuring the correct concentrations are prepared, well-mixed, and added to test plates at the proper volume³. 

Plate Handling

High throughput screening screens use a vast number of test places. Automated systems use barcodes to identify and correctly manage these plates, which helps to remove a significant amount of human error from the workflow. Automated systems also help to ensure that test plates are safely disposed of after screening runs.

Data Acquisition & Analysis

High throughput screening generates a massive amount of data, which can be challenging to process and interrogate manually. Automated systems allow for rapid data collection from the screening hardware and use dedicated software to generate almost immediate insights into promising compounds for the researcher⁴. Manual data collection and analysis are tedious, time-consuming, and prone to errors that could lead to generating false positives and the failure to identify compounds that show real promise.

Benefits of Liquid Handling Automation in High Throughput Screening

Automation in high throughput screening is incredibly powerful for generating vast quantities of data, but it also has other benefits for researchers.

1. Increased Speed & Throughput

Liquid handling automation allows research to cover more ground faster than manual methods. With automated approaches, researchers can test more compounds in less time. This leads to faster insights into test compounds, faster research programs, and faster drug discovery processes.

2. Improved Accuracy & Consistency

Manually pipetting and transferring plates undoubtedly leads to errors⁵. This means researchers cannot rely on their results and are more likely to follow a false lead. Furthermore, automation means that different institutes and companies can perform precisely the same protocols, allowing for rapid and more accurate validation of promising hits.

3. Reduced Costs

By reducing error, automation in liquid handling minimizes the need for repeat experiments, which are costly in terms of time and reagents lost. Furthermore, automation and microfluidics technology allow researchers to scale down high throughput screening experiments and use only a fraction of the reagents while generating high-quality results⁶. Automation also reduces labor costs, requiring fewer researcher hours to pipette hundreds of plates manually. 

4. Wider Scope for Discovery

By reducing the burden of manual pipetting and reducing costs, automation allows researchers to allocate their resources to ask broader research questions. Automation will then enable researchers to test a more comprehensive array of potential therapeutics, including more extensive chemical libraries and protein-based drugs developed through synthetic biology.

The Future of High Throughput Screening with Automation

While automation has transformed the drug discovery landscape, it is still far from reaching its full potential. The advent of increasingly powerful AI will likely lead to more efficient drug discovery processes. Computational chemistry is increasingly used to screen potential compounds for hitting or docking with their molecular target⁷.

When integrated with automation, these factors will allow for the physical screening of more promising candidates and decrease drug discovery timelines. Faster and more efficient robotics technologies will likely speed up the screening process, leading to faster insights (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Advanced technologies like the I.DOT Liquid Handler are game-changers in automated high throughput workflows by providing fast and accurate screening of test compounds.

Conclusion

Automation has revolutionized high throughput screening by enhancing drug discovery speed, accuracy, and cost-efficiency. Automated liquid handling and plate management ensure precise preparation and handling of test compounds, significantly reducing human error and variability.

Ultimately, automated high throughput screening shortens drug discovery timelines and allows researchers to rapidly test a broad range of potential therapeutics. As technology advances, particularly with the integration of AI, the efficiency and effectiveness of high throughput screening will continue to improve, promising a brighter future for drug discovery for those ready to embrace new technologies.

Unleash the Speed and Precision of High Throughput Screening with Automated Liquid Handling

High throughput screening hinges on flawless liquid handling. The I.DOT Liquid Handler delivers exceptional precision for your high throughput screening workflows. With non-contact dispensing as low as 4 nL, the I.DOT Non-Contact Dispenser ensures accurate and consistent dispensing of even the most delicate samples.

Boost your high throughput screening efficiency and achieve faster discovery rates. Book a demo today to learn more about the I.DOT Liquid Handler and how it can revolutionize your drug discovery pipeline!

References

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