SLAS2016 Short Courses

High-Content Screening: An Introduction to Instrumentation, Assay Development, Screening, Image and Data Analysis

High-content screening is a powerful technology platform for implementing functional cell-based assays that allow truly multi-parametric analysis in the physiological context of intact cells. This course provides an introductory level overview of the state-of-the-art components of HCS (instrumentation, reagents, HC assay development, automated image analysis and multi-parametric data analysis, and data standards) together with some showcases of small molecule and RNAi high-content screens in industry and academia.

Who Should Attend:

• Individuals who plan to develop or apply HCS technologies
• Individuals who look to implement HCS capacity at a screening center
• Individuals with first experience in HCS but want to get a systematic overview, learn more about good practice in assay development and particularly how to manage and analyze large scale data

How You Will Benefit From This Course:

The course will provide:

• an introduction to all aspects of HCS including data analysis
• an overview on major categories and thereof examples of HCS instrumentation
• guidance to assay selection and systematic optimization
• a demonstration of good practice in assay validation and screening
• an introduction to principles of image analysis and review of various commercial and open source software such as CellProfiler
• an introduction and examples of multi parametric data analysis
• discussion of clustering approaches
• an introduction of data standards
• presentation of case studies of RNAi and small molecule screens
• on demand, discussion on hit verification and target deconvolution strategies

Course Topics:

• Introduction to High-Content Analysis and Screening (HCA / HCS)
• HCS instrumentation overview
• Reagents and assay development for HCS
• Image analysis
• Data management and analysis
• Case studies of high-content RNAi and small molecule screens

Instructors:

Eberhard Krausz is working for VIB, a more than 1400 scientists counting life science research organisation in Flanders, Belgium, translating basic research outcomes into industrial applications. Since 2008, he has been supporting scientists during various positions in industry and academia in technology selection, target identification & validation, assay development & screening, and drug discovery. In 2003-2008, he was heading the central high-content screening labs at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany. Before, he held responsible positions in biotech industry at Cenix BioScience (Germany) and Cyclacel (Scotland, UK) dealing with RNA interference (RNAi) and drug discovery, respectively. Before joining a medical research centre in Munich running a gene therapy project in restenosis, he earned his Ph.D. at the LMU M�nchen (Munich) studying gene regulation in eye lens development. By training he is a microbiologist. Eberhard Krausz was for many years member of the Academic Outreach Committee (AOC) of the Society of Biomolecular Screening, now SLAS.

Steffen Jaensch works at Janssen R&D, Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson in Beerse, Belgium. Since 2011 he is responsible for the analysis of high-content assay development and screening projects for drug discovery, target identification & validation and phenotypic compound characterization. His current focus is on the development of compound profiling methods for target predictions based on multi-parametric analysis of high-content imaging data. Before joining Janssen R&D he earned his Ph.D. at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany and HHMI Janelia Farm research campus in Ashburn, USA developing image analysis algorithms for studying centrosome dynamics in C. elegans embryos. By training he is a computer scientist.