Approaching High Content Screening and Analysis: Practical Advice for Users

Application of Image-Based High Content Analysis for the Screening of Bioactive Natural Products

“…The greatest advantage of image-based platform HCS is the ability to see and record the biology by means of a picture. Table 1 shows a variety of cell-based methods and how these map to features that are often significant when looking to implementing a cell-based assay [7,18] Although HCS represents a very attractive approach as described above, designing, performing and interpreting HCS assays is comparatively complicated. Several key elements therefore should be carefully considered.…”

Applications of High Content Screening in Life Science Research

“…Historically, HCS has its origins in drug discovery, initially providing novel secondary assay formats, selectivity screens, and cytotoxicity profiling using the multi-parameter and individual cell attributes of the approach. “High content, in context, and with correlation” describes the data coming from the current HCS platforms [ 18 ], but understanding the value and utility of what that data represents is only now becoming obvious in the literature. In a brilliant example, Young et al ., elegantly show how powerful the application of multi-faceted HCS data can be in their recent paper that integrates HCS and ligand-target prediction to identify pharmacological mechanisms of action [ 19 ].…”

A focus on high‐content cytometry

“…The expression “high‐content screening (HCS)” (5) has recently been described: “High content screening can be defined as an automated imaging approach to understanding compound activities in cellular assays where, in each well of a microplate, you can measure spatial distribution of targets in cells, individual cell and organelle morphology, and complex phenotypes. It provides the flexibility to measure cell subpopulations and to combine multiple measurements per cell, while simultaneously eliminating unwanted cells and artifacts.” (6). High Content screening is also known as chemical biology, cell based screening, chemical genetics, phenotypic screening, visual screening, cytomics, and it has a major place in pharmaceutical company drug discovery (7–9).…”