ABSTRACT

In the pursuit for new drug candidates, pharmaceutical companies test hundreds of targets against millions of potentially valuable compounds. To identify meaningful candidates as quickly as possible, pharmaceutical companies look for innovations that will accelerate the drug-screening process, while reducing nonspecific hits. To this end, high-throughput screening (HTS) instrumentation and assays that are robust, cost-effective, and amenable to automation are essential. The NorthStar

HTS Workstation (Figure 44.1) is a fully integrated luminescent imaging system specifically developed to expedite lead discovery. Features include a cooled charge-coupled device (CCD) camera optimized to image highly sensitive luminescent assays; integrated liquid and plate handlers; standard and high-density microplate imaging formats; multiwavelength detection capability; easy-to-use, intuitive software; and the capacity to perform up to 500,000 assays per day. The use of proprietary chemiluminescence reagents combined with the NorthStar HTS Workstation

further enhances the performance of HTS assays by providing an integrated system for highly sensitive detection with wide dynamic range and glow light emission kinetics for cell-based assays, and enzyme, protein, and nucleic acid quantitation. The total system approach of the NorthStar HTS Workstation provides pharmaceutical screeners a versatile solution for lead discovery.