Having historically looked atcharacterising our compound collection for cytotoxicity and cytostaticity orperformed the routine annotation of the AstraZeneca compound collection withfrequent hitters, we are looking into alternative compound annotation solutions(e.g. imaging or transcriptomics output) and the added benefits they mayprovide. The Cell Painting imaging assay multiplexes six fluorescent stains toenable the visualisation of up to eight cellular compartments in U2OS cells. Wewill present how we have established the Cell Painting imaging assay in384-well plates and made it compatible with our CoLab automation platform. Theuse of a centrifugal plate washer afforded the reduction of staining solutionneeded and combined with a microvalve-based microplate dispenser allowed theminiaturisation of the assay to 1536-well plates. Specific collections we haveapplied the Cell Painting imaging assay include a set of compounds also testedwith a metabolomics output, compounds that are part of a phenotypic set orcompounds from a nuisance compound set. On the analysis side, we will share ourexperiences using a traditional analysis pipeline (segmentation, working with ca. 1500 features).
