Instrumentation for Drug and Virus Screening Applications

With more than 30 years’ experience BMG LABTECH are a leading company in the microplate reader field and are the only provider to specialise solely in the supply of plate readers. BMG LABTECH instruments are designed with sensitivity, flexibility, and speed in mind to match all research needs and budgets. Highlighted here are their use for drug discovery research.

Drug screening is mainly performed in 384 and 1536 well plates to maximise throughput and to minimise reaction volumes per sample. Speed, sensitivity, and precision are therefore key requirements for screeners. A reliable robust design is also essential, as any errors occurring during a screen result in loss of time, reagents and consequently money.

BMG LATBECH’s microplate readers have market leading performance ensuring hits can be reliably detected at low volumes and at the fastest speeds. 

The PHERAstar FSX is considered the gold standard for drug discovery as it achieves all these requirements in all detection modes, making it a popular and essential microplate reader in screening facilities.  The PHERAstar FSX offers Simultaneous Dual Emission for all read modes making it the best solution for all FRET, BRET, fluorescence polarisation, TR-FRET and AlphaPlexTM assays. For kinetic screening the ability to inject and read simultaneously also means that even the most rapid kinetics can be captured, making the detection of Kon and Koff measurements a possibility with this instrument.

Data shows a TR-FRET tracer characterisation to establish Kon and Koff using the PHERAstar FSX.

Binding kinetics: high throughput assay for kinase inhibitors (bmglabtech.com)

For low to medium throughput testing and for assay development, the CLARIOstar Plus with its revolutionary Linear Variable Filter (LVF) MonochromatorTM technology is the perfect addition to develop and characterise an assay before transitioning to a high throughput workflow.
 

The current pandemic has prompted drug discovery researchers to focus their efforts on the development of both vaccines and antiviral drugs to assist in control and cure of the disease. Assays that can assess the protection of a drug against viral infection and Viral Cytopathic Effects (VCE) are often measured using imaging or microscopy techniques. With the ability to encode virus with fluorescent tags and with the development of kits for the detection of cellular damage it is possible to run these assays within a microplate reader making it possible to screen many samples at once and at speed where necessary.

This data produced from a drug repurposing screen shows the detection of fluorescently encoded virus in the presence of drug at 24 and 48 hrs, the data compares the output of the CLARIOstar Plus to that of an imaging device. The CLARIOstar Plus offers a rapid low-cost detection for this assay making it highly suitable for use as a screen.

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