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P2059
Maintaining 1536 Well Assay-Ready Microplate Reagent Integrity Using An Automatable Microplate Lid That Provides An Environmental Barrier Seal
Presenter Mark Rothenberg, Corning LIfe Sciences, USA
Additional Authors: Claude Dufresne, Angela Gray, Michael W. Briggs, and Todd Upton
An important driver in the drug screening industry is to reduce costs through assay miniaturization and improvements in small volume liquid handling.  Acoustic dispensing allows dispensing of nanoliter amounts of compounds directly into assay plates, eliminating the need for intermediate dilution plates.  At volumes this small, compounds are much more sensitive to being impacted by the environment.  Consistent generation of valid data from HTS screens requires that libraries and reagents are protected from both evaporation and from hydration of DMSO by atmospheric moisture.  Reagents in outside and corner wells are most vulnerable to the environment due to edge effects. 
To realize the benefits of small volume dispensing while still generating consistent, reliable HTS data, screeners are evaluating multiple approaches to maintaining the integrity of their samples in 1536 well microplates.  These options can require alterations to the microplate or seal method that are not ANSI compliant and require human intervention.  As an alternative, we assessed the protective capacity of a novel ANSI compliant microplate lid which is compatible with manual or automated methods, that consists of a gasket and four latches that are used to seal the well array of the plate. 
For our testing, the impact of the environment on both dry DMSO (compound libraries) and aqueous reagents (assay-ready microplates) in 1536 well plates was assessed.  DMSO plates were surveyed for % DMSO and average height in the wells using a Labcyte® Echo™ 550.  The locking lid method resulted in an average %DMSO of above 94 at four weeks, and significantly improved edge and corner effects.  The locking lid also protected aqueous reagents from edge and corner effects in overnight (16 hr) evaporation studies similarly to heat seals.