To gain access to the HTS facility and scientific staff for assay development and small screening projects, principal investigator(s) must first meet with the HTS Core Director, Bruce Posner, Ph.D., to discuss the primary assay, the goals for the screening project, assay development that has been completed to date, and downstream studies that will help advance the hits identified in the screen.
Access to the HTS Core is at the discretion of Dr. Posner and is based largely on the originality of the screen, the feasibility of the assay and screening strategy, and the therapeutic potential of the approach.
Once access is granted, the principal investigator will work collaboratively with the HTS Lab to develop, optimize, and validate the assay for a small screen. Assay development is described in greater detail under HTS Screening of Chemical Compounds or siRNA Libraries.
Small projects are defined as screens that interrogate small chemical or RNAi libraries in the HTS Core or are supplied by the principal investigator. The Core has several chemical sublibraries that include the Prestwick Collection (~1,100 approved drugs), the MacMillan Natural Products Fraction Collection (~7,360 fractions representing ~30,000 natural products), the NIH Clinical Collection (~450 experimental drugs), and the 2K subset (~1,800 natural product–like commercial compounds).