HTS Data Analysis - quattro/Workflow
High-throughput-screening (HTS) is one of the key technologies to identify promising active compounds in drug discovery. Due to the progress in lab-automation and assay-design, scientists are able to generate thousands of datasets every day. The processing and analysis of the screening raw data is the main challenge in order to get the most information out of the data. Processing of raw data using several separate tools is cumbersome and prone to human errors, thus leading to problems with reproducibility and validation. quattro/Workflow automates the whole processing of screening raw data and assists scientists in the analysis and visualization of screening assays. quattro/Workflow was developed in close collaboration with companies providing HTS services.
Key Features
- Integrated workflow engine to build complex processing workflows
- Extremely fast: processing of >1000 wellplates in just a few minutes
- Handles 96, 384 and any kind of custom wellplate formats.
- Integrated robust curve fitting algorithms, e.g. for the IC50 calculations
- Visual multi-wellplate inspection to detect trends, anomalies etc.
- Template based raw data import; reads any text or Excel based raw data files, even multi-wellplate files
- Chemistry enabled
- Open XML-based data format
- Freely distributable result viewer included, allows sharing data with colleagues or customers
- Stand-alone application, no database or server installation needed
- Optional: Oracle database interface for the integration into existing infrastructure
The Workflow Engine
The flexible approach of quattro/Workflow allows automated analysis of almost all kinds of HTS data. Depending on the origin of the data, the user will receive detailed reports with all relevant information, e.g. IC50, Z?, CV.
Initial Screening
quattro/Workflow can analyze und visualize thousands of racks in just a few minutes. Interactive well plate views allow detecting false positives quite easily. One of the unique features of quattro/ Workflow is the integrated stack view displaying all well plates of a series superimposed in one graphic.
Quality Management
quattro/Workflow automatically calculates several statistical parameters, like Z', CV etc. Interactive charts allow to gain an insight into problematic data sets or to detect trends in time.
Dose-Response Analyse
quattro/Workflow performs non-linear regression of dose-response data. The built-in plausibility- check reduces the need of manual inspections to a minimum. Outlier data points can be removed manually when needed. All data manipulation steps are documented in the result data files.
Chemistry Module
quattro/Workflow allows combining results from e.g. dose-response experiments with chemical structures. The chemistry module imports data from SD files, Oracle databases or custom data sources.