Skip to main content

Target Validation & Screening

The goal of the Target Validation & Screening (TVS) section is to provide investigators access to automated liquid handling equipment, sensitive high throughput detectors, and diverse collections of screening libraries to facilitate the identification and validation of therapeutic targets as a step towards developing new drugs and therapies. The TVS program provides the expertise in cell and molecular biology assay development and will assist the adaptation of an existing assay into higher throughput formats.

Capabilities

  • Over 60,000 small drug-like compounds
    • ChemDiv 40K--Collection of 40,000 diverse chemical compounds purchased from Chemical Diversity Labs (ChemDiv) in a 384-well format, each at 10 mM in 100% DMSO.
    • Maybridge HitFinder-- Collection of 14,400, drug like compounds from Maybridge special packaged as a dry film with 0.1 cm of each compound in a 384-well plate format that are then typically suspended in 100% DMSO at 10 mM.
    • MicroSource Spectrum-- Collection of 2,000 compounds, 50% drugs, 30% natural products, and 20% other bioactive components available in a 96-well format, each at 10 mM in 100% DMSO.
    • SBi Collection-- Collection of 4,381 compounds collected from several commercial sources plus 67 compounds synthesized in house.
    • Maybridge Ro3 Fragment-- Collection of 1,000 compounds meeting the Rule-of-3 Fragment Library offers keys features necessary and available in many fragment libraries while guaranteeing solubility of the compounds @ 200 mM in DMSO and having chemically linkable analogs available for future linking of fragments into higher affinity compounds.
  • Liquid handling and plate reading instruments
    • Beckman-Coulter Biomek FX and NxP
    • BMG PHERAStar FS, BMG Optima PolarStar and BMG PHERAStar Plus
  • Assay development toward a high-throughput format
    • Cell proliferation, viability, cytotoxicity, luciferase reporter systems, kinetic assays
  • Creation of stable mammalian cell lines using lipid-based transfection or lentivrial expression systems
  • Mammalian protein production and purification (working with PEB)