Smart well-plate for high-throughput screening technology
Investment from a Canadian Cancer Research group will help get the new HTS technology to market
The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) has made an investment to accelerate commercialisation of a revolutionary high-throughput screening technology directed at the discovery of anticancer drugs.
The technology, Smart Well Plate, developed at the University of Toronto, is a palm-sized device that utilises digital microfluidics (DMF), a technique that allows manipulation of cells and tiny droplets of liquid on an open platform with no moving parts.
‘The Smart Well-Plate technology may allow for less expensive screening of chemical libraries and elimination of false leads earlier in the drug discovery process, ensuring a higher success rate for clinical trials focused on cancer’ said Frank Stonebanks, vice-president, Commercialisation and coo of OICR. ‘OICR’s investment is engineered to move this promising technology closer to commercialisation.’
High-throughput screening, or HTS combines robotics with data computing, liquid handling devices, and sensitive detectors that allow researchers to quickly conduct millions of biochemical, genetic or pharmacological tests. The HTS process allows for rapid identification of activecompounds, antibodies or genes that modulate a particular biochemical pathway.
In recent years, the introduction of microfluidics has improved the HTS process by miniaturizing cell-based assays. However, the process is limited by the complexity of controlling the reagents simultaneously in interconnected channels. In addition, microfluidics heavily relies upon robotics.
DMF takes the screening concept a step further, by reducing robotics and simplifying reagent handling. It allows droplets containing mammalian cells to be addressed with compounds from chemical libraries in a highly efficient and low-cost manner, allowing automated, fast, and reliable analysis of chemical entities. Most importantly, a much smaller amount of cells and reagents are required to do the same testing.
The principal investigators for the Smart Well Plate are Dr. Aaron Wheeler, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, and internationally recognised analytical chemist and renowned cancer expert Dr Jeff Wrana, Senior Investigator at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto.