In Vitro Assay Development and Screening Capabilities:

The high throughput screening capabilities are built around two Janus Automated Workstations (Varipsan and MDT) capable of supporting 96-well or 384-well platforms.  The system supports multiple in vitro and cellular assay paradigms for the study of enzymes, receptors, ion channels and transporter proteins. The Envision 2104 Multilabelreader provides capabilities to detect diverse platforms including absorbance, fluorescence, luminescence, Alpha Screen^® and fluorescence polarization. High throughput radiolabel binding and uptake assays are supported with a Perkin Elmer Topcount NXT-HTS Microplate scintillation counter.  In addition, label free methods using LC/MS/MS are routinely utilized for in vitro drug metabolism studies. High throughput screening is supported by a 40,000 member small molecule diversity-based screening library which includes linear and cyclic peptides as well as the Prestwick 1,200 member library of FDA approved drugs. The center recently licensed and implemented the Dotmatics Informatics Platform (Dotmatics, Ltd) to support the chemical database, high throughput screening data management, structure activity relationship (SAR) analysis,  and data visualization. The facility has three tissue culture suites to support development of cell based assay and maintenance of cultured cells.

In vivo:

Micro dissection
Behavioral assessment
       Conditioned place preference
       Analgesia and tolerance

Ex vivo:

       Radio ligand
              Homogenate binding
              Autoradiography
              Rubidium efflux
              Neurotransmitter release

       Receptor profiling
              Drug affinities
              Functional responses
              Subunit composition
              Quantification and distribution

       Protein and neuron characterization
              Western blotting
              Immunohistochemistry
              HPLC
              Synaptosomal preparations

Other Specialized Capabilities:

       Pharmacogenomic Analysis of SNP’s
       Copy Number Variations
       Cell-based assays
              cytotoxicity
              apoptosis
              caspase activation
              cell viability
       In-vitro metabolism
       Pre-clinical PK

For additional information contact:

Marlene A. Jacobson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology
Associate Director, Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research
215-707-1951
marlene.jacobson@temple.edu

John C. Gordon, Ph.D.
Manager, Screening Center
Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research
215-707-4654
john.gordon0001@temple.edu