Automated Toxicity Profiling of Small Molecule Compounds in Living Cells

Presenters: Paul Held, BioTek Instruments, Winooski, VT and Wayne Patton, Enzo Life Sciences, Farmingdale, NY

A panel of novel fluorescence-based live cell assays that assess the impact of drug candidates on overall subcellular organelle function, with particular emphasis on the autophagy-lysosome pathway, as well as the mitochondrial and nuclear compartments will be demonstrated. Organelle function was assayed using fluorescence intensity measurements, without any requirement for subcellular imaging. The assay workflows involved provide a rapid and quantitative high-throughput approach for determining drug- or toxic agent-induced live cell response, offering throughput advantages relative to methods based upon electron microscopy, fluorescence microscopy or flow cytometry.