High throughput screening is available to academic and corporate research laboratories. The MHTSC staff will work with clients to implement HTS assays. Modifications often required include optimizing buffer choice and concentration, target protein and substrate or ligand concentrations, tolerance to DMSO, temperature, pH, and/or ionic strength, divalent cation concentrations and incubation times of the reaction. Additional factors that usually need to be addressed before beginning HTS include: assessment and enhancement of target molecule and substrate or ligand stability under screening conditions; and optimization of signal above background. Modifications to an assay can be made to accommodate absorbance, radio-isotopic, fluorometric, luminescent, or other means of detection.

We offer screening to clients at different levels or stages. In addition to full screens from our library of 100,000 compounds, a smaller scale screen may be conducted with a subset of our compound library (~10,000 compounds). The compounds selected for this purpose will include a diverse and representative set of the larger compound collection. After the initial assay (conducted at a single concentration), active compounds are retested to verify activity. Verified active compounds are evaluated in a dose response assay to help prioritize the active compounds. Evaluation of each compound’s activity in a dose response allows discrimination of potency and mechanism and assists in structure-activity relationships. 

CONTACT:

Mr. Tom DeKoning, Marketing Manager, CTA Corp CTACorp@vai.org

Robert Kilkuskie Ph.D.,  rkilkuskie@kvcc.edu