SLAS2020 Short Courses

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

High-content screening (HCS) is a powerful technology platform for implementing functional cell-based assays that allow for 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 together with some showcases of high-content screens in industry and academia.

Who Should Attend

• Individuals who plan to develop or apply high-content analysis (HCA) and screening technologies
• Individuals who want to implement HCA/HCS infrastructure and capability at their organization or labs
• Individuals with experience in HCA/HCS who want to get a systematic overview, learn more about good practice in assay development and how to manage and analyze large scale data

Course Benefits

The course will provide:

• An introduction to all aspects of HCS, including data analysis
• An overview of major categories and examples of HCS instrumentation
• Guidance on assay selection and systematic optimization
• A demonstration of good practice in assay validation and screening
• An introduction to principles of image analysis and a review of various commercial and open source software, such as CellProfiler
• An introduction to multi-parametric data analysis using supervised and unsupervised approaches
• Review of data analysis and visualization tools
• Presentation of case studies of assay development and screens
• On demand discussion of 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 Evotec (France), Toulouse, France Eberhard Kraus, Ph.D. (Evotech) has been a group leader in oncology drug discovery since 2018. Prior to 2018, he supported scientists through various positions in industry and academia, in the areas of technology selection, target identification and validation, assay development and screening, and early drug discovery. Between 2003-2008, he was the head of the central high-content screening labs at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany. He has also held positions in the biotech industry at Cenix BioScience (Germany) and Cyclacel (Scotland, UK) focusing on RNA interference (RNAi) and drug discovery, respectively.

Steffen Jaensch Janssen R&D, Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson Steffen Jaensch, Ph.D. (Janssen Pharmaceutical) is responsible for the analysis of high-content assay development and screening projects for drug discovery, target identification 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. He earned his Ph.D. at the Max-Planck-Institute CBG in Dresden, Germany, and HHMI Janelia Farm research campus in Ashburn, USA, where he developed image analysis algorithms for studying centrosome dynamics in C. elegans embryos. By training he is also a computer scientist.