Time

Edison Room

Piscataway Room

4:00 to 5:00 p.m.

LABVIEW Seminar- Kapeeleshwar Krishana

5:00 p.m.

The Gyrolab Bioaffy? technology offers a microfluidic solution for performing sandwich immunoassays at nanoliter scale. By working at nanoliter scale, reaction times are reduced from hours down to minutes. This means that up to 112 data points can be generated within one hour. Samples are processed in parallel under controlled conditions, enhancing reproducibility and reliability. Assays are performed automatically within the instrument platform thus reducing hands-on time. The main application areas for Gyrolab Bioaffy are within the protein drug development process; including clone selection and productivity, impurities quantification, pre-clinical development and pharmacokinetics. Examples have shown that Gyrolab Bioaffy is an effective and flexible tool in protein quantification.

5:30 p.m.

The PHERAstar Plus is a simultaneous dual emission HTS microplate reader offering all leading detection technologies including fluorescence intensity, FRET, fluorescence polarization, time-resolved fluorescence, TR-FRET, LASER-based AlphaScreen? luminescence, BRET, and UV/Vis absorbance. The PHERAstar Plus provides enhanced HTRF?performance with market leading Z?and TR-FRET ratios, a fourfold increase in luminescence sensitivity, and extremely low well to well standard deviations in fluorescence polarization. This is made possible by BMG LABTECH innovations in the modular optical system combined with the unique well-proven detection technology. The PHERAstar Plus is the only microplate reader on the market with five photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and Simultaneous Dual Emission (SDE) technology optimized for specific reading modes, along with the capability to capture TR-FRET decay curves in real-time for assay optimization.

Regardless of the types of assays that are performed with automated liquid handlers, such as high throughput screening, lead optimization, PCR, compound dilution, assay transfer, etc., these systems should be assessed with a simple, robust method for both accuracy and precision of the volume transfer steps. Because analyte concentration is volume-dependent, an assay results might be falsely interpreted if liquid handler variability and inaccuracies are unknown or if the systems go unchecked for a long period. No one wants to perform assays that could essentially produce meaningless results. If liquid handlers are properly employed (with the right methods/materials for the specific assay) and they are regularly assessed for performance, they are very powerful systems for lowering costs, increasing throughput, and avoiding errors associated with manually-pipetted methods. By using a robust methodology to quantify liquid handler performance, an assay specific tolerances can be better understood and used as the benchmark for ensuring confidence in the process, i.e., the minimum and maximum volume transfer variability that creates a orking assay?can also be determined instead of relying on printed liquid handler specifications. Among other examples, this presentation will give examples where a robust volume verification method was employed for: (1) optimizing a liquid handler for a given assay; (2) facilitating the transfer of a benchtop PCR assay to automation; (3) measuring nanoliter transfers of DMSO target solutions; (4) troubleshooting an assay for what ended up being a bad ip in the box? (5) measuring the accuracy of 1:2 dilution steps across a plate; and (6) emphasizing the importance of precision and accuracy of the volume transfers, even in the screening world.

6:00 p.m.

      Automation has increased the efficiency of carrying out a broad range of applications - from simple tasks such as preparation of standard curves and serial dilution of samples, to more complex applications such as diagnostic assays and high-throughput screening in drug discovery and development studies. The quality of data obtained from these automated experiments depends not only on a reliable automated liquid handling system, but also on the quality of reagents and solvents used. This presentation will show examples of ultrapure water systems directly feeding liquid handling robots. This design not only eliminates the tedious task of manually filling up the reservoirs that come with these robots, but it also minimizes the risk of contamination that could compromise the results of experiments. Data that illustrate the advantages of using ultrapure water over bottled water in common laboratory experiments will also be presented.

Alpha technology allows you to assay the most complex samples and moleculesuch as samples containing serum and full-length proteinsaster and without laborious wash steps. AlphaScreen and AlphaLISA are powerful, exclusive research reagent platforms that utilize PerkinElmer proprietary bead-based Alpha technology. Both are ideal to measure the largest and most complex molecules: ?AlphaScreen is the most versatile, endogenous and physiologically relevant assay solution for large biological molecules. It is perfect for biochemical and cellular screening applications. ?AlphaLISA is the no-wash ELISA assay alternative that allows you to run samples more efficiently without compromising sensitivity. It less time intensive than traditional ELISA and minimizes interference for difficult samples such as serum or plasma. Together, AlphaScreen and AlphaLISA allow you to measure a wide range of biological molecules and interactions in a custom or high-throughput format without the need for washing and diluting. Either platform is ideal for automation and saves time, labor, reagents and other resources. In addition to all of the above, AlphaLISA is not affected by interference from hemoglobin, making it ideal for serum and plasma.  AlphaLISA assays are not intended for diagnostic purposes. 

6:30 p.m.

Calcium indicator dyes enable a valuable and frequently used class of assays for live-cell high-throughput screening applications. The current BD?Calcium Assay Kit and BD?PBX Calcium Assay Kit are wash-free, fluorescence-based reagent kits that have been widely used in high-throughput screening labs for G protein coupled receptor and calcium channel targets. This tutorial will focus on a second generation calcium assay kit with improved signal-to-background performance, and application example with 1536 well plates. In addition, a new calcium assay kit providing alternative wave length options will also be discussed with respect to its utility for high-throughput screening and high-content, imaging-based applications.

    The long-term preservation of electronic records requires proper migration strategies for Archives and records held within the Archive. Selecting an appropriate migration strategy requires careful project management skills related to assessment and retention management. Xyntek data migration team clearly recognizes the difficulties and complexities during data migration across Research & Development, Drug Discovery and related realms. With the support of a recent case study, Xyntek offers insight into its proven processes and solutions that help navigate businesses through these migrations.

7:00 p.m.

Melanoma is the most aggressive form of skin cancer, which invades into deeper layers of the skin and has a propensity to metastasise early. There are several steps in this metastasis process, including: intravasation, survival in circulation, arrest in a specific organ, extravasation, growth and secondary tumour formation. The key steps involved in extravasation (exit of tumour cells from blood vessels), are the attachment of tumour cells to the endothelial cells lining the blood vessels via adhesion proteins, whilst under constant blood flow, and invasion to the tissue underneath. In this study, we modelled survival in circulation and adhesion to endothelial cell-derived proteins, using Cellix VenaFluxTM Platform, to determine if these steps in extravasation differed in an isogenic melanoma cell line model of progression. The isogenic cell line model series was comprised of the poorly tumourigenic parental cell line WM793 and its derivatives WM793-P1 and WM793-P2 (obtained via Matrigel-assisted in vivo passaging in mice) and 1205-Lu (obtained from spontaneous metastasis to the lung) which display increased growth and invasion in vitro, as well as tumourigenicity in vivo, compared to the parental line. Firstly, Cellix Vena8TM Biochip micro-capillaries were coated with three different adhesion molecules, V-CAM, I-CAM and fibronectin, and melanoma cells were subjected to a constant shear stress of 0.5 dyne/cm2, mimicking microvascular conditions. We found that WM793, WM793-P1 and WM793-P2 cells did not adhere to any of the specified adhesion molecules, whereas 1205-Lu cells adhered to V-CAM under defined flow conditions. To examine this further, we applied a decreasing gradient shear stress of 5, 2, and 0.5 dyne/cm2 which resulted in increasing adhesion of 1205-Lu cells to VCAM at shear stresses lower than 2 dyne/cm2. This ability of 1205-Lu cells to attach to V-CAM under high shear stresses may contribute to its extravasation abilities, thus contributing to its high metastatic potential. To mimic the full extravasation process endothelial cells were grown on Cellix VenaECTM Biochip and the GFP-labelled tumour cells were subjected to defined shear stresses. GFP-1205Lu cells adhered to the endothelial cell layer.

7:30 p.m.