The planning and establishment of a sample preparation laboratory for drugdiscovery

Nature has always been a productive source of new drugs. With the advent of high-throughput screening, it has now become possible to rapidly screen la rge sample collections. In addition to seeking greater diversity from natur al product sources (microorganisms, plants, etc.), fractionation of the cru de extracts prior to screening is becoming a more important part of our eff orts. As sample preparation protocols become more involved, automation can help to achieve and maintain a desired sample throughput. To address the ne eds of our screening program, two robotic systems were designed. The first system processes crude extracts all the way to 96-well plates, containing s olutions suitable for screening in biological and biochemical assays. The s ystem can dissolve crude extracts, fractionate them on solid-phase extracti on cartridges, dry and weigh each fraction, re-dissolve them to a known con centration, and prepare mother plates. The second system replicates mother plates into a number of daughter plates.