Screening Unit

The Screening Unit (SU) aims to provide open access for academic projects towards experiments in medium-throughput fashion. The Screening Unit serves for systematic, plate-based screenings of cellular and biochemical assays, with collections of chemical libraries with state-of-the-art equipment.

The mission of the Screening Unit is to:

• Provide screening collections of compound libraries.
• Identify bioactive compounds capable of modulating cellular functions.
• Miniaturize test volumes to reduce costs for expensive reagents.

The SU staff provides general steps of medium-throughput screening:

• Preparation of cells and compounds libraries.
• Small scale test with positive and negative controls to test Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO tolerance) on a given target cell.
• Pilot screen with a small number of already used compounds to test different readouts, positional effects of plates and systematic liquid handling errors.
• Configuration and programming of the Tecan Freedom evo robot.
• Data acquisition and handling from automatic plate reader.
• Validation of identified effective compounds.
• Access to the unit to carry out screens upon appropriate training.
• Problem solving.

The SU hosts an open access technology platform of:

• Tecan Freedom evo robot.
• Automatic plate readers (Infinite 200 Tecan, GLOMAX Explorer Promega and PHERAstar BMG LABTECH).