Scientists at Genedata Enhance Cell Based Screening Workflow

Genedata have developed a novel analysis workflow to exploit cell based assays in early drug discovery. The company will present the workflow at the forthcoming Annual Society for Biomolecular Screening conference in Montreal, Canada.

Compared to conventional screening technologies, cell based assays provide a more complete picture about the biological effects of chemical compounds. But to exploit these assays in drug discovery, scientists must find efficient ways to extract discovery-relevant information from thousands of high resolution images of cells.

Swiss-based computational firm Genedata is collaborating with imaging technology providers to enhance automation and standardization for the analysis of cell based assays. So far, it has created a robust data exchange format for two-way communication between standard image data formats and Genedata’s analysis system.

Genedata has also produced a web browser based review workflow for accessing microscopy image data at any point during data processing and analysis. The workflow makes it vastly more practical to go back and validate screening results against the original data. This means biologically important information obtained from cell based assays can be identified with greater efficiency.

The presentation at the forthcoming SBS conference shows how this can improve the accuracy and reliability of high content screens of compounds or of so-called small inhibitory RNA’s. Improvements such as this make it more practical and efficient to screen for complex biological effects in a high throughput industrial setting. “This is a software driven collaboration with technology providers that is bringing added value to cell based screening approaches to drug discovery”, explained Dr. Stephan Heyse, Head of Genedata Screener.