PerkinElmer China

The battle against the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated life science research across the world, while technological breakthroughs in automation, digitalization and AI continue to open new prospects for drug discovery and development.

For drug discovery, particularly small-molecule drug discovery, the identification of “hit” from compound libraries and hit-to-lead are crucial. Researchers have been constantly optimizing and improving screening approaches, among which high-throughput screening (HTS) remains the first choice for small-molecule drug development, as it offers the most effective way to rapidly find new leads.

High Throughput Screening primarily utilizes in-vitro testing methods using robotics and miniaturization. It can test thousands of low volume samples to identify potential lead compounds during drug discovery. Compared with traditional drug screening methods, HTS is characterized by its enhanced productivity, low cost, high efficiency, and resulting in large volumes of valuable data. It enables simultaneous testing of thousands of samples and real-time analysis of experimental data to accelerate the early phase of drug screening.

With decades of experience in life sciences including strong expertise in automation platforms enabling liquid handling and sample preparation, PerkinElmer has provided customized HTS solutions for drug discovery and development customers worldwide. In China, PerkinElmer has designed and built automated HTS solutions for various target- and phenotype-based applications for pharmaceutical and biotech companies, contract research organizations (CROs), universities and research institutes.

Latest case studies demonstrate how new technologies of fully automated HTS workstation can help research institutions accelerate and streamline the drug discovery process.

At Tianjin Medical University, PerkinElmer’s explorer™ G3 HTS workstation has helped researchers to screen over a dozen targets of the 150,000 compounds in only three months, while the traditional manual process would have taken years.

The customized workstation features a smaller footprint, full integration, flexible liquid handling and various detection modules. Inside the biosafe enclosure, different automated devices (e.g. cell incubators, plate storage hotels, plate sealing and peeling) and an EnVision™ multilabel reader were integrated around a collaborative robot. To support the high content plate reading, Opera Phenix® Plus confocal microplate imaging system was also integrated via a 4-position turntable adjacent to a cell incubator unit. The incubator unit provides the Opera Phenix Plus with ready to read plates while the remainder of the system is engaged in liquid handling and/or plate preparation by JANUS® G3 workstation.

It is predicted that the growing healthcare expenditure and the increasing focus of governments globally, to develop advanced medicines will continue to accelerate the HTS market worldwide1.

The system was designed to facilitate screening of a 100,000-well compound library within a single run.

At China Pharmaceutical University, a similar explorer G3 HTS system was built, as part of the novel drug screening platform the university has recently established. The HTS system enables full automation from sample preparation to data analysis, thus reducing human intervention to the minimum, improving the speed as well as the precision and accuracy. It also features automated one-stop data analysis and report export, enabling users to track and manage the entire experiment process to improve throughput and work efficiency. The system has successfully facilitated compound screening for researchers at the university and provided important data for their recent research publication.

It is predicted that the growing healthcare expenditure and the increasing focus of governments globally, to develop advanced medicines will continue to accelerate the HTS market worldwide1. For HTS solution providers, strong innovation capability to push the limit of throughput and speed remains the competitive edge to thrive in the rapidly expanding and evolving market.