External ID: UIHTS20180925

Protocol: Assay overview:
The purpose of this assay is to identify test compounds that differentially kill either epithelial cells or mesenchymal cells, critical components of EMT. The PC-3E+ and TEM4-18 cell lines, characterized as epithelial cells and mesenchymal cells respectively, were established in Henry Lab (Ref 1). For potential discriminative modulators of EMT, the two cells lines were labeled with GFP and mCherry respectively, and co-cultured together to eliminate those hits that non-discriminatingly kill both epithelial cells and mesenchymal cells by cytotoxicity irrelevant to the EMT properties.
Protocol for the EMT project:
The primary screening data were generated as described in HTS assay protocol table (Ref 2).

Table 1: HTS assay protocol table
Step Parameter Value Description
1. Plate cells 200 uL By MultiFlo. PC3E GFP 2,000 cells/ well and TEM418 mCherry 2,000 cells/well (1:1). Overnight incubation
2. Remove media Flip the plate
3. Add fresh media 150 uL By MultiFlo
4. Controls 200 uL C01-H01, C12 -H12, Hygromycin dose response from H to C were positive control. Wells A01, B01, A12 and B12 were negative control
5. Library 50 uL MSSP library 1 uM final from middle plate in full media
6. Incubation 72 hrs 37 C and 5% CO2
7. Assay readout GFP and mCherry channel imaging Perkin Elmer Operetta high content imaging system, with Harmony image analysis software.
8. Image analysis Green cells and Read cells counting Normalized to the average cell number of well B1 and B12 (no inhibition of cell viability) controls on each plate to get relative cell viability for each well.
9. Hit selection 11 hits The hit criteria for preferential cell killing are compounds that Redcells_Normalized is lower or equal 0.41, GreenCells_Normalized is higher or equal
0.55, RedCells/GreenCells_Normalized ratio is lower or equal 0.65, and Non-fluorescent by itself for Red cell killing OR Greencells_Normalized is
lower or equal 0.41, RedCells_Normalized is higher or equal 0.46, RedCells/GreenCells_Normalized ratio is higher or equal 1.8 and Non-fluorescent
by itself for Green cell killing.

The primary screening data (imaging data) were translated into Green or Red cell numbers in each well in the data file.

Comment: Preferential killing compounds are considered as active hits (score of 100) when meeting one of two groups of criteria:

1. Compounds that Redcells_Normalized is lower or equal 0.41, GreenCells_Normalized is higher or equal 0.55, RedCells/GreenCells_Normalized ratio is lower or equal 0.65, and Non-fluorescent by itself for Red cell killing.

OR

2. Greencells_Normalized is lower or equal 0.41, RedCells_Normalized is higher or equal 0.46, RedCells/GreenCells_Normalized ratio is higher or equal 1.8 and Non-fluorescent by itself for Green cell killing.