The major goal of the High-Throughput Technology Development Studio (TDS) is to provide expertise in assay development towards high-throughput applications and high content screening services (HCS). To this end the HT-TDS has state-of-the-art technologies for cell-based screening such as robotic liquid handling stations, plate readers and several automated microscopes. The services include developing complex automated image analysis pipelines and multi-parametric analysis of high content imaging applications.

Expertise:

Assay and technology development for high-content screening (lab automation, siRNA transfection, chemical screening, automated microscopy, live cell imaging, image analysis, data management, mutli-parametric statistics), robotic liquid handling processes (remarrying of libraries, hit picking, normalisation)

Interests

• Application of automated image-based screening at subcellular resolution
• Analysis of kinetic parameters of biological processes in medium-throughput mode with live cell automated microscopy
• Identification of new gene functions and phenotypes after depletion or knock-down
• Identification of new chemical or biological entities that induce equivalent phenotypes
• Using chemico-genomic approaches to discover mode of action of compounds (comparison RNAi and chemical screens)

Technologies:

• Automated confocal microscopy
• Automated widefield microscopy
• Fluorescence emission
• Fluorescence polarisation
• HTRF (homogeneous time resolved fluorescence)
• Alpha ELISA
• Luminescence
• Absorbance
• Acoustic dispensing
• Electroporation
• Automated liquid handling (contact and free dispense)

Services:

1. Complete execution of high-throughput / high-content screening projects

• Assay transfer (adaptation of the bench experiment to a screenable assay)
• Automation
• Validation
• Screening

2. Provision of individual processes performed by TDS-staff:

• Transfection 
• Liquid handling for all sorts of applications (reformatting & replication of libraries, normalisation of products to identical concentrations, cherry/hit picking, preparation of dilution series, etc.)
• Measurements in homogeneous solution with plate readers
• Measurements in cells or tissues with automated microscopes

3. Assay Development:

• Assay design: full service cell-based high-content assay design and development using multi-parametric readout to tackle your specific biological questions
• Assay optimisation: cost effective process optimisation for high-throughput screening, down-scaling, transfection optimisation, work-flow optimisationAssay validation: validation of assays according to well-established standards
• Image and statistical analysis
• Development of image analysis solutions for imaging projects (low and high throughput microscopy)(CellProfiler, MotionTracker, Acapella, Matlab, BioApplications)
• Development of statistical analysis solutions for biological questions (R, KNIME, Matlab)

4. User Facility:

• After an introduction and initial training, the TDS provides individuals with the opportunity to perform automated experiments or projects on their own with the instruments provided in the User Facility