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Drug Discovery Compound Management "So basically the tumor loads itself up with the albumen-coated nanoparticles by the ac- tive transport mechanism, resulting in en- richment of Taxol where it needs to be." In compound management, nanopar- ticles are more needy than their chemical cousins. They are less stable than small mol- ecules, which can exist happily in DMSO in a desiccator. "But with nanoparticles, even if they're in powder, they clump, they aggregate, they re-precipitate, there are templating effect. It's a very complicated picture," said Damoi- seaux. "That's something that dynamic light scattering is very useful for." Challenge of Dry Compounds Recent progress in compound manage- ment has not, however, included the transfer of dry compounds, despite the high demand Continued from page 21 for automation of this common task. "The physical transfer of dry compound from source to destination is still a very manual process, mainly because the industry has not developed an acceptable automated solution due to the extreme complexities of transferring dry compounds," says Genen- tech's Hascall. "Although weighing compounds is one of the least desired tasks in the lab, it is a critical first step to preparing the sample for testing. Whether compound management is weighing a large library, or newly syn- thesized compounds from chemistry, it has historically required human manipulation of the compound for the transfer to occur." One of the challenges of automating this process is the type of solid—powders are much easier for robots to work with. Has- call's group uses a fully automated weighing Trying to get a handle on precipitates and aggregates in solutions, UCLA researchers are finding dynamic light scattering very useful. Develop a new understanding of THE ROLE OF MITOCHONDRIAL DYSFUNCTION in obesity, diabetes, metabolic disorders, and age-related diseases IV III II I system called the Nova, from Innovate Engi- neering (www.innovateengineering.com), to transfer dry, free-flowing powders. Other solids such as dry films, oils, glob- ular material, or chunks of crystals, still present challenges. For powder transfer, the Nova uses a stainless steel collector pin charged with static electricity, to which the powder clings. The Nova changes the collector pin each time to avoid cross contamination, and uses powder level detection (similar to liquid level sensing) to calculate the static charge, and the right level at which to place the collector into the vial. "Fully automated weighing holds many challenges that the Nova has been designed to handle," says Hascall. "With a greater than 85% success rate in our study of over 4,000 compounds, the Nova can be consid- ered to be one of the first fully automated compound transfer robots." It is also integrated into Titian's (www.ti- tian.co.uk) Mosaic compound-management software to eliminate manual data entry. Even though compound management is evolving quickly, new challenges are directly ahead. For example, nucleic acid reagents such as plasmids, siRNA, microRNA, and shRNA are increasingly stored and require a special kind of management. The Seahorse XF Extracellular Flux Analyzer The XF Analyzer, and XF Stress Test Kits, make cellular bioenergetic studies simple, efficient and user-friendly. The first new in vitro metabolic measurement in 50 years, XF Analyzers non-invasively profile the metabolic activity of cells in minutes, offering scientists a physiologic cell based assay for determination of basal oxygen consumption, glycolysis rates, ATP turnover and respiratory capacity in a single experiment to assess mitochondrial dysfunction. A repository that stores plasmids, which are typically purified using RNases, and also stores siRNA must have separate, dedicated liquid-handling systems to avoid destruction of the siRNA. See what's possible. Scan this QR code to view videos and see what the XF Analyzer can achieve. Visit www.seahorsebio.com/gen for more information! "These are the strategies," says Damoi- seaux. "You have to be very careful to set up your equipment in such a way that the workflows are parallel, and the overlaps are such that you are not damaging reagents." Whether for nucleic acid reagents or oth- er compounds, no doubt parallel advances in software and automated instrumentation, such as MScreen, the Plate Auditor, and the Nova, will pave the way to progress, with labs running more smoothly than ever. 22 | October 1, 2012 | genengnews.com | Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News Rent an www.seahorsebio.com/rental XF Analyzer NOW!