Discussion

Traditional flow cytometry has an important role throughout the drug development cycle and is represented at each phase in some capacity. The increasing use of phenotypic cell-based assays in drug discovery has led to a drive to find ways of increasing flow cytometry throughput. The introduction of faster sampling technologies combined with the use of peripheral automation and liquid handling has recently transformed flow cytometry as a drug screening tool.
We will describe some of the specific areas where high throughput flow cytometry has been used, in particular, its application to profiling large compound sets in phenotypic focussed screening campaigns, multi analyte detection and for screening hybridoma secreted antibodies using cell based assays.