HiTS is a platform for assisting in the design of bioactive molecules (chemical-biology probes and drug candidates) directed by Xavier Morelli, which combines two components:
- An experimental component (Carine Derviaux), which encompasses high-throughput liquid handling technologies particularly suited to screening activities of small molecules and other types of tests requiring automation and miniaturization.
- A computational component (Philippe Roche), in which we provide expertise in molecular modeling (molecular dynamics, molecular docking, pharmacological filters, etc.) and chemoinformatics (management, analysis, comparison of molecules, directed chemistry, etc.).
In this article, we wish to highlight the arrival of a new equipment on the experimental platform in April 2024. This new liquid transfer automaton called Echo 650 (Beckman) has indeed found its place at the heart of our robotic Access platform (Beckman). The Echo uses a contactless transfer technology that allows moving droplets of 2.5 nL by acoustic energy, achieving unprecedented levels of miniaturization and cost reduction, while avoiding the need for intermediate solutions.
Thanks to this equipment, we are able to routinely operate on 1536-well plates for in vitro screening experiments and on 384-well plates for in cellulo experiments. One of the main applications of the platform is high-throughput screening of chemical libraries from various small molecule sources available on the platform:
- Fr-PPIChem (10314 molecules targeting protein-protein interaction inhibition profiles)
- Prestwick (1520 “FDA approved” or clinically tested molecules)
- iSCB-frags (1000 small molecules with MW < 300 Da)
- HITCH (110 molecules capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier)
- METABO (137 molecules targeting metabolic pathways)
- TrGET-leukemia (42 molecules targeting leukemia)
Our activities are not solely focused on screening small molecules, as in addition to the Echo 650, the experimental platform can assist you in deploying various types of assays thanks to other equipment we have:
- A robotic arm managing x2 racks of 20 plates and x2 stacks of 50 plates for serial manipulations.
- A high-throughput general-purpose dispenser (CertusFlex) with 8 individual dispensing heads compatible with cells.
- A multimodal reader (PherastarFS) equipped with numerous filters (Fluorescence, Absorbance, Luminescence, HTRF, AlphaScreen, Fluorescence Polarization, Absorbance, etc.)
- An offline RT-QPCR reader in 384-well plates (Biorad CFX 384)
