External ID: CHOL_MOT

Protocol: Vibrio cholerae motility assay; Soft agar motility assay Methods
Fifty nl of test compound was dispensed to a dry assay plate with an Echo550. Then 50ul of LB containing 0.3% agar was added to the plates with a Matrix/Thermo Wellmate. The soft agar containing assay plates were allowed to solidify at room temperature for at least 4 hours. Bacterial inoculation was done with an Echo 555 which was used to transfer 2.5 nl of bacterial culture, containing approximately 20 bacteria, to the soft agar plate. The 2.5 nl drop of bacterial culture was delivered to the corner of the well and was accomplished by adjusting the well offset for the destination plate on the Echo. Plates were incubated at 30C for 14 hours then read using absorbance at 615nm on a Perkin Elmer Envision. The read location in the well was offset diagonally to allow maximum distance between the inoculation site and the read location. The primary read was absorbance at 615 to monitor bacterial growth and motility from the inoculation site to the read location. To differentiate between non-motile and non-viable, alamarBlue was added following the absorbance read. Plates were incubated for 60 minutes at 30C and then fluorescence intensity was determined by reading with an excitation wavelength of 535 and an emission wavelength of 590nm using a top read and a well center location. Non-motile viable colonies convert the alamarBlue while non-viable wells remained blue allowing the discrimination between antimicrobial compounds and motility inhibitors.

Comment: Possible artifacts in the V. cholerae motility assay include, but are not limited to, compounds that auto fluoresce (false positive for viability read) and compounds that absorb in the 500-600 nm range (false negative), or precipitate.
Outcome: Compounds that inhibited motility (OD615 assay) but that did not inhibit bacterial viability (alamarBlue assay) were identified as actives. A total of 18 compounds were ordered screened in the confirmatory (dose response assay) at concentrations ranging from 50 to 0.1 uM. Two compounds showed IC50s of less than 12uM in the motility inhibition assay and were inactive in the alamarBlue bacterial viability inhibition assay. Two additional compounds had a selectivity index of greater than 3.5, were also considered "Active". Compound that were active in the primary screen that were not tested in the confirmatory set were labeled with an Outcome of "Inconclusive".
The following tiered system has been implemented at Southern Research Institute for use with the PubChem Score.
Compounds in the primary screen are scored on a scale of 0-40 based on the difference % inhibition of the motility and growth inhibition results. In the interests of time, the compounds were selected on first run values. The second primary screen replicate was used for statistical analysis of the reproducibility of the primary assay.

External ID: RMI-FANCM-MM2

Protocol: FP HTS. Screening took place at the University of Wisconsin Small Molecule Screening and Synthesis Facility. A master mix of RMI core complex and F-MM2 (30 microL per well) was plated in black 384 shallow well plates (ThermoFisher, Waltham, MA), using a BioTek "MicroFlo Select" reagent dispenser. Compounds were added using a Beckman FX liquid handler; 0.33 microL of 10 mM stock was added for a final compound concentration of 33 microM. MM2 and cMM2 were each added to 4 wells of master mix per plate to a final concentration of 10 muM to serve as controls. Following compound addition, plates were covered, centrifuged briefly, and incubated for 20 minutes at room temperature. FP measurements were taking using a Tecan "Safire 2" microplate reader. Instrument settings were as follows: top read, EX 470, EM 525/20, G-factor 0.89947. A suitable gain was calculated from the first plate of each day. Z' scores for were calculated for each plate; plates with Z' scores <0.5 were rerun prior to analysis.

Comment:

External ID: WaveGuideAssay:441

Protocol: For initial screening, TetON human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293) expressing GluA2 and stargazin, gamma-2, were plated in 384-well BD purecoat amine-coated plates at 16k cells/well. Cells were induced with 8 ug/mL doxycycline in the presence of 30 uM NBQX and incubated O/N at 37deg in 5% CO2. They were washed with Hank's Balanced Salt Solution (HBSS) containing 20 mM HEPES, pH 7.4 and FLIPR VSD dye solution was added and incubated on the cells at room temperature for 45 minutes. The cell plate was loaded into the Hamamatsu Functional Drug Screening System 6000 (FDSS), 10 seconds of background were collected before addition of compound at 30 uM final concentration. Data collection continued at 1Hz sampling and experimentally determined EC50 glutamate stimulus was added at 300 seconds. Controls of 1 mM glutamate (maximal effect) and NBQX (antagonist) were used to calculate a Z' score per plate.

Data were processed using the Vanderbilt screening analysis platform, WaveGuide. Data were normalized by dividing the raw fluorescence for all time points by an average of the baseline fluorescence. For each well, 4 values were calculated as follows:

1. CMPDslope was the slope of the normalized value within the timeframe 11-18 seconds,
2. CMPDmaxmin was the difference in maximal and minimal normalized value within the timeframe 8-100 seconds
3. GLUslope was the slope of the normalized value within the timeframe 310-315 seconds, and
4. GLUmaxmin was the difference in maximal and minimal normalized value within the timeframe 301-380 seconds.

Compounds were marked as hits where any of the above calculated results for a compound differed by at least three standard deviations from the mean for that calculation across all compounds in the plate.

Compounds denoted as 'hits' were given the score of '100' and outcome of 'active'. All other compounds were denoted as 'inactive' and given a score of '0'.

Comment:

External ID: VANDERBILT_HTS_GIRK2_HPP

Protocol: To screen for modulators of the G protein-gated inwardly-rectifying potassium channel subunit 2 (GIRK2) homomeric channels, HEK293 cells were engineered to overexpress GIRK2 and the neuropeptide Y receptor type 4 (NPY4). The purpose of NPY4 overexpression was to promote modest activation (~30% activity) of GIRK2 channels upon NPY4 activation with human pancreatic polypeptide (hPP). These cells were screened using a high-throughput thallium-flux assay in a 384-well format. High-throughput thallium flux assays are based on three principles: (1) extracellular thallium can permeate through potassium channels into cells, (2) the fluorescent dye Thallos enters and stays in the cytoplasm of HEK293 cells, and (3) the fluorescence of Thallos increases dramatically when it interacts with thallium ions. Compounds that modulate the activity of an overexpressed channel, in this case GIRK2, are identified by the change in fluorescence that results from changes in thallium influx into cells through the overexpressed channel.

The screening protocol was conducted as follows. One hour prior to screening, cells were loaded with 1.5 micromolar (muM) Thallos in assay buffer (1x Hank's Balanced Salt Solution and 20 millimolar (mM) HEPES). The liquid handling and imaging was conducted using a kinetic-imaging plate reader, Panoptic (WaveFront Biosciences). Before screening, Thallos-containing buffer was removed from cells and replaced with 20 microliters (muL) per well of assay buffer. Compounds were dissolved in assay buffer at 20 muM. After 8 seconds of imaging, 20 muL of compound solution was added per well and allowed to incubate for 150 seconds. Next, 10 muL of a solution containing 2.0 mM thallium and 3.5 nanomolar (nM) hPP in Base Buffer (125 mM NaHCO3, 1 mM MgSO4, 1.8 mM CaSO4, 5mM Glucose, and 20 mM HEPES) was added to the wells. 30 seconds later, 12 muL of base buffer containing 2.0 mM thallium and 1 muM hPP, a maximally-activating concentration, was added to each well. Data was collected for 60 seconds after this final addition. The positive control for this screen was 16.6 muM eprinomectin, a natural product previously identified as a GIRK2 activator as part of a small-scale pilot screen. Microsoft Excel was utilized for data analysis. Data were normalized, F/Fo, on a well-to-well basis to account for differences in cell number. Compound activity was analyzed by comparing the sums of control-subtracted amplitudes of fluorescence intensity at 20 seconds after each thallium addition. The top 0.5% compounds corresponding to wells that demonstrated the largest increases in fluorescence were selected as "hits" for counter screening, as described below.

All 34,131 compounds screened using the method described above are listed in column OUTCOME_SCREEN_HITS. The 167 compounds selected as hits based on the above criteria are labelled ACTIVE in this column. Fluorescent compounds were included in the inactive compounds and marked as INACTIVE.

The 167 active compounds from column OUTCOME_SCREEN_HITS were tested for non-specific activity in untransfected HEK293 cells using assay conditions otherwise identical to the primary screen. Column OUTCOME_HEK_COUNTERSCREEN lists the 39 compounds that displayed an increase in fluorescence upon thallium addition, labelled with ACTIVE.

The 128 compounds which were identified as hits in the primary screen but inactive when tested in untransfected HEK293 cells were tested for activity in GIRK2-overexpressing HEK293 cells that did not express NPY4 receptor. Column OUTCOME_GIRK2_COUNTERSCREEN lists the 8 compound that displayed an increase in fluorescence upon thallium addition, labelled with ACTIVE.

The 8 active compounds from column OUTCOME_GIRK2_COUNTERSCREEN were tested at various concentrations to determine if compound activity was concentration dependent. Column OUTCOME_GIRK2_DOSE_RESPONSE provides the efficacy of these compounds; activity of all compounds at the provided concentrations was normalized to the activity of VU0529331 at 37.5 muM, which was the highest efficacy observed during this screening. For each compound concentration listed, the efficacy of that compound provided refers to the normalized, control-subtracted fluorescence intensity at 15 seconds after the addition of thallium. Compounds that demonstrated >5% efficacy and concentration-dependent activity were labelled as ACTIVE.

Finally, column Outcome combines all of the information from the above counterscreens together, indicating the 6 hits from this GIRK2 screen.

Comment: