297 Distinct Cell Lines: A High-Content Analysis Assay and a Full-Automation Design Solely Using Noncontact Liquid Dispensing

This review assesses the quality of the data acquired over a 13-week period from a High-Content Analysis screening project that used 297 unique cell lines. This article also evaluates the proficiency of a “tipless” (i.e., does not use disposable tips) full-automation design used for this project that prioritizes intralab system mobility and system configuration mutability. The request to assay a large number of cell lines with poorly characterized growth rates led us to devise an MDS PharmaServices, Inc. proprietary algorithm in an effort to select the proper cell plating density for each cell line. The performance metrics include coefficients of variation (CVs) of Controls for the cell plating data and Data Set Mean CVs for assessing replicate propinquity (i.e., how close the replicates are to each other). The performance of the automation system and our algorithm for this project produced data of superior quality.