High Throughput Analysis Laboratory

Northwestern University At Chicago, Evanston IL

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

The High Throughput Analysis (HTA) Laboratory was a developmental facility in the past CCSG renewal, in which it was referred to as the Diagnostics and Therapeutics Screening Core. It is located on the Evanston Campus. The HTA Laboratory's mission is to provide Lurie Cancer Center researchers with advanced technology and expertise for large scale experiments that elucidate the basic biology of cancer and discover novel therapeutic agents. Such experiments can involve parallel manipulation of thousands of samples and the gathering and analysis of data at a similar scale. They include cell-based screening of large compound libraries, massively parallel investigation of gene function using RNAi and gene disruption collections, and high throughput biochemical assays. The facility offers advanced technologies for automated liquid handling, strain collection manipulation, and data acquisition. It provides access to 17 major instruments. These include four advanced platforms for robotic liquid handling, two of which specialize in highly accurate nanoliter liquid dispensing. The facility's analytical equipment includes four photometric plate readers that provide facility users all major detection modes, including simultaneous whole-plate fluorescence measurement for parallel analysis of ion currents and other kinetic phenomena. Additionally, the facility offers access to a Cellomics Arrayscan high-content screening system. The HTA Laboratory integrates these platforms with laboratory infrastructure such as tissue culture, wet bench, and microbial growth chambers, allowing complex in-house work flows. Together these make a broad spectrum of molecular and cell-based assays possible. Importantly, In addition to training and access to instruments, the core offers extensive service for design, validation, and execution of diverse large-scale experiments, including compound library screening and genome-scale functional analysis. The facility also houses biological and chemical libraries for distribution or screening, including a collection of bacterial stocks of snRNAmir lentiviral vector constructs that target nearly all genes in the human and mouse genomes. This capability includes a recently installed tube-based chemical library storage system The HTA Laboratory currently has 251 active users from 76 research groups. Over the last funding period, 79 to 95% of instrument was by Cancer Center member groups. Thus, in its developmental period the facility has become an important established resource for the cancer research community at Northwestern University.