The Laboratory Robotics Interest Group
Mid Atlantic Chapter
January 2002 Meeting
Compound Storage and Retrieval Strategies
in HTS
Date: Wednesday,
January 16, 2002
Place: Somerset Marriott Hotel, 110 Davidson Ave. Somerset, NJ
08873
Phone: (732) 560-0500
Itinerary: Social Period -
4:30 to 6:00 PM
Meeting & Presentations - 6:00 to 8:30 PM
Pre-Registration: REQUESTED, not required. Pre-registering will allow
us to more accurately gauge seating requirements and refreshment
needs. Indicate names of attendees and company affiliation. Pre-register
by email with <>. In order to speed sign-in at the meeting, please bring
a business card to drop into the registration box. There will be
business card drawings for our beautiful LRIG rosewood pens and any vendor
(hint, hint) supplied prizes.
Door Prizes:
Rosewood Pens (LRIG)
Palm m100 Handheld (TekCel)
unannounced (Analytical Biological Services)
Agenda:
The High Throughput Screening industry faces the bottleneck
of an increasing amount of lead compounds making automated compound storage and
retrieval a necessary process to achieve the desired assay level. A recent
D&MD report noted: "... it may no longer be sufficient to provide increased
throughput for screening while doing nothing to affect downstream bottlenecks in
later-stage screening. Alternatively, it may no longer be sufficient to
provide high-throughput screening solutions that fail to effectively interface
with compound storage and retrieval systems." This
inaugural meeting is focused on current
and future approaches in Automated Compound Storage and Retrieval technologies.
Food and refreshments will be available FREE OF CHARGE
during the Social Period.
Fresh Vegetable Crudite
Includes: Garden vegetables with assorted dips.
Antipasto Display
Includes: Fresh Mozzarella, Provolone, Imported Olives, Roasted
Red Peppers, Artichoke Hearts, Mushrooms,
Pepperoncini, Stuffed cherry Peppers, Prosciutto, Pepperoni and Salami.
Italian Pasta Station
Includes: assorted sauces and accompaniments. Asparagus Tips, Broccoli
Florets, Sun Dried Tomato,, Pepper Confetti, Black Olives, Capers, Olive Oil and
Garlic, Grated Parmesan Cheese, Garlic Bread and Breadsticks.
Oriental Wok Station
Includes: Stir Fried Chicken and Beef prepared with Oriental Vegetables,
Soy Sauce, Sweet and Sour Sauce, and Hot Mustard. Served with Egg Fried Rice and
Fortune Cookies.
There will be a cash bar as well as
soft drinks, coffee and tea.
There is always a Job posting board at the social. Please encourage your recruiters to
give you material to post and distribute. Openings may also be posted at https://www.lab-robotics.org/careers.htm.
Members interested in presenting a scientific poster are encouraged to do so. Please
contact us to arrange for poster space.
There is no fee to attend the meeting.
Presentation: Modular
Strategies for Automated Storage and Retrieval
John Morin, Ph.D.; Biological Chemistry Section, Wyeth-Ayerst Research, Pearl
River, NY, USA
The Wyeth-Ayerst Research (WAR) High Throughput Screening (HTS) group is
responsible for supporting project teams from 6 different therapeutic areas and
maintains HTS laboratories at 2 separate sites. In addition to providing assay
development and HTS services, we are responsible for dissolving compounds in
DMSO and formatting them into micro-titer plates for distribution inside and
outside the company. The WAR corporate library has swollen over the past 10
years through merger activities and the acquisition of combinatorial chemistry
collections. By mid-1999 we estimated that sample preparation, storage and
retrieval were consuming more than half of our personnel and equipment
resources, so we began a project to improve our sample management functions. We
achieved greater efficiency almost immediately simply by consolidating
responsibility for sample management to a small group of volunteer specialists.
Further gains came from collapsing our old 96-well sample plate library into
384-well plates, but the manual storage and retrieval of sample plates in over
70 upright freezers was still a bottleneck. We therefore circulated a Request
for Proposals to several leading vendors of automated storage and retrieval
systems. After many presentations and extensive deliberation, we ultimately
chose to avoid the standard approach of a large, complex, integrated system with
multiple overlapping and interdependent functions and to invest instead in a
novel hybrid system composed of modular units provided by 3 different vendors.
(TekCel, The Technology Partnership and Packard/CCS) I will describe what wee
building and why we chose this path. I will also update our progress as elements
of the system have begun to arrive.
Presentation: Advances in Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) for Modern
Compound Handling Operations
Mel Reichman, Ph.D.;
PDC Inc., West Chester, PA
Advances in HTS technologies over the past decade have been impressive. While
raw HTS remains a minor component (< 3%, by time) of the typical Discovery
project life cycle; it is a key "stage-gate", core function in
Discovery Research. If we postulate the view that overarching drug screening
efforts in Pharma represent a manufacturing process wherein the deliverables are
bona fide development candidates, rate-limited steps can be proactively
identified and mitigated. Compound handling operations are core to all of
Research, and have been a persistently troublesome bottleneck. This talk will
present advances in compound storage and automated sample retrieval systems
(ASRS), as well as modern QC/QA for lead compounds qualification.
Presentation:
SmartPlate integrates library management and assay platforms to increase
throughput and preserve compound library
Jeffrey A. Karg, PE;
Boston Innovation Inc.; Cambridge, MA
Assay miniaturization has pushed the limits of fluid handling. 384 and 1536
well screening requires accurate and reliable compound dispensing during the
reformatting procedure. This time-consuming and wasteful step is eliminated with
the SmartPlate?/font> shipping, storing, and dispensing technology that includes
integral dilution. A new concept assigns a DMSO dissolved compound to an
individually addressable sealed tap. The taps are the storage, metering,
dispensing, and diluting elements and formatted in a 384-well plate-based array.
Compound dispense volumes range from 5-200nl. Reformatting, disposable tips, and
wash cycles are eliminated. This presentation will highlight how SmartPlate10
works, implementation examples, and current performance data.
Presentation:
Mass Storage / Retrieval of Chemical and
Biological Libraries
Dr. Terry V. Iorns,
Iorns Consulting, Inc., 6334 E. Viewmont
Drive, Mesa, AZ 85215 USA
Storage, retrieval, and distribution of chemical and biological libraries is
a critical activity in drug discovery. Successful high throughput screening
requires careful coordination and interaction of screening technology with assay
/ reagent preparation and availability of screening libraries. Failure of any of
these to come together leads to a problem in the discovery program.
What is a library? Consider a library as a collection of chemical compounds or
biological substances that should be handled or screened together. Examples
include:
?Compound Collection ?all the compounds/substances a pharmaceutical company
can put their hands on.
?Related compounds by activity in a class of assay ?such as a kinase or
protease library.
?Related by structure or synthesis ?combinatorial libraries
?Purchased collections
How are libraries received, stored and exchanged? There are four major ways to
handle libraries:
?Solubilized in plates
?Solubilized in tubes or microtubes
?Neat substances in vials
?Neat substances in tubes or plates
Neat substances are generally quite stable and are generally stored at room
temperature. Sometimes neat substances must be stored cold, in an inert
atmosphere, or protected from light. Solubilized substances are generally stored
in 100% DMSO. Most organizations store these solutions cold, near the freezing
point of DMSO. Source plates or tubes generally contain a fairly high
concentration, usually in the range of 3 to 20 mM. Collections are generally
distributed to screening laboratories at much lower concentrations, usually less
than 1 mM and often in the mM range.
Handling issues to consider:
?Automation of processes to prepare and distribute libraries
?Vendor and equipment reliability
?Sealing tubes and plates to protect solutions from evaporation or water
absorption
?Unsealing or piercing plate seals to allow sampling by screening robots
?Stability of substances in solution over long periods of time and conditions
This paper will conclude with a survey of equipment and techniques to make the
handling of libraries easier and more reliable. Products from several vendors in
the following categories will be mentioned:
?Storage and retrieval systems
?Sealing and piercing devices
?Replication systems
?Robotic systems
