An efficient method for the detection and elimination of systematic error in high-throughput screening.

MOTIVATION: High-throughput screening (HTS) is an early-stage process in drug discovery which allows thousands of chemical compounds to be tested in a single study. We report a method for correcting HTS data prior to the hit selection process (i.e. selection of active compounds). The proposed correction minimizes the impact of systematic errors which may affect the hit selection in HTS. The introduced method, called a well correction, proceeds by correcting the distribution of measurements within wells of a given HTS assay. We use simulated and experimental data to illustrate the advantages of the new method compared to other widely-used methods of data correction and hit selection in HTS. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Using clustering techniques to improve hit selection in high-throughput screening.

A typical modern high-throughput screening (HTS) operation consists of testing thousands of chemical compounds to select active ones for future detailed examination. The authors describe 3 clustering techniques that can be used to improve the selection of active compounds (i.e., hits). They are designed to identify quality hits in the observed HTS measurements. The considered clustering techniques were first tested on simulated data and then applied to analyze the assay inhibiting Escherichia coli dihydrofo-late reductase produced at the HTS laboratory of McMaster University.

HTS-Corrector: software for the statistical analysis and correction of experimental high-throughput screening data.

MOTIVATION: High-throughput screening (HTS) plays a central role in modern drug discovery, allowing for testing of >100,000 compounds per screen. The aim of our work was to develop and implement methods for minimizing the impact of systematic error in the analysis of HTS data. To the best of our knowledge, two new data correction methods included in HTS-Corrector are not available in any existing commercial software or freeware. RESULTS: This paper describes HTS-Corrector, a software application for the analysis of HTS data, detection and visualization of systematic error, and corresponding correction of HTS signals. Three new methods for the statistical analysis and correction of raw HTS data are included in HTS-Corrector: background evaluation, well correction and hit-sigma distribution procedures intended to minimize the impact of systematic errors. We discuss the main features of HTS-Corrector and demonstrate the benefits of the algorithms.