High-Throughput Screening and Data Analysis

• Activity Number: 198
• Type: Roundtables
• Date/Time: Monday, August 2, 2010 : 12:30 PM to 1:50 PM
• Sponsor: Biopharmaceutical Section
• Author(s): Xiaohua Douglas Zhang*+
• Companies: Merck Research Laboratories
• Keywords: High throughput screening ; RNA interference ; data analysis ; quality control ; hit selection

Abstract

High throughput screening (HTS) plays a central role in modern drug discovery, allowing the rapid screening of diverse chemical compounds (i.e., small molecule) or short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) to identify active compounds or effective siRNAs ("hits"). One of the major advantages of HTS is its ability to simultaneously interrogate thousands of compounds or genes. With the ability of generating a large amount of data per experiment, HTS has led to an explosion in the rate of data generated in recent years. Consequently, one of the most fundamental challenges in HTS is to glean chemical/biological significance from mounds of data, which relies on the development and adoption of statistic methods for both quality control and hit selection. In this roundtable, we will discuss the frontier research on data analysis and methodology development in this important developing area.