automation for HCS

[John Ringeling]

I am wondering if people are willing to share what kind of liquid
handling automation they use to automate dose response assays. We
would like to be able to do ~70-100 plates/day and run into logistical
issues (i.e. it takes longer to add drug to the plates than the 30 min
incubation time)

Thanks
John

[Joe Trask]

Dear John,
I am sure others will provide great feedback for you but I can tell
you what we did for a large scale cell signaling screen similar to
what you may be doing is batch process the plates in smaller sets on
whatever automation equipment you have at your disposal, granted we
had compound plates (single point or dose reponse) already prep prior
to transfer to cell plates. You will need to determine timing by
measuring the speed of the transfer, plate handling etc for the robots
and add some comfort time to figure out how many plates to process per
batch. At 100 plates per day it will lengthen the work day if only 1
machine 1 FTE. As long as you have plate controls you should be able
to normalize or count for variability during the work flow process
even if the screen occurs over multiple days. Of course all of this
is mute if there are reasons you cannot breakup the batch process. I
hope this helps and good luck.
Regards,
Joe