Broadcast Date: January 13th, 2016
Time: 11:00 am ET, 8:00 am PT

High-throughput combination screening of drug candidates has become a critical and costly component of the cancer drug discovery process. Most cancer treatments administered to patients today rely on the combination of more than one drug. The multifaceted approach is designed to treat tumor cells in the primary site as well as the metastatic lesions and circulating tumor cells. Additionally, treatment with drug combinations can reduce some side effects and drug resistance.

To reach a viable cancer treatment, research groups must assess the synergistic, additive, and antagonistic effects of varying combinations of drugs at a range of concentrations across multiple cell lines. This is typically done in multiplexed experiments that require careful mapping of samples and reagents stored in library plates to wells of assay plates in complex matrices. The complexity required for these types of experiments often eliminates manual pipetting as a reliable liquid-handling method and quickly exposes the limitations of automated tip-based liquid handling.  These factors have led to the establishment of acoustic liquid handling as a preferred method for preparing combination screening assays. With acoustic liquid handling, samples and reagents are rapidly transferred from any well of a library plate to any well of an assay plate in any arrangement, matrix, or layout necessary. Additionally the levels of miniaturization, precision, and accuracy achieved with acoustic liquid handling greatly lowers screening costs while increasing throughput—a significant boost of efficiency.

In this GEN webinar, our panelists will discuss their methods for trying to identify new therapeutic compounds in the fight against cancer and how acoustic liquid handling has accelerated their cancer drug discovery process.

Randy Dyer, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Labcyte, will introduce the technology inside Labcyte® Echo®  liquid handlers and their latest software application, Echo Combination Screen.

Bruce A. Posner, Ph.D., Professor and Director of the HTS/RNAi Screening Core at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, will describe his collaborative efforts to discover new therapeutic strategies for cancer using phenotypic and targeted chemical screens and how this research is being extended to identifying novel drug combinations. Moreover, Dr. Posner will highlight how the Labcyte Access™ platform has streamlined his laboratory’s workflow and has become an integral part of his research.

Who Should Attend

  • Cancer biologists
  • Molecular biologists
  • Researchers interested in drug discovery
  • R&D scientists
  • High-throughput screening scientists
  • Scientists developing biopharmaceutical analytical workflows

You Will Learn About

  • Phenotypic and chemical screening techniques for the discovery of new therapeutic strategies in treating cancer.
  • A streamlined approach for identifying potentially novel drug combinations that may be effective as cancer chemotherapeutic agents.
  • How Echo liquid handlers can increase the speed and accuracy of  traditional liquid-handling methods and its application toward cancer drug discovery

Produced with support from:

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Panelists

Bruce A. Posner, Ph.D.
Director, HTS/RNAi Screening Core,
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Randy Dyer,
Senior Product Marketing Manager,
Labcyte