News | November 11, 1998

FMAT System Accelerates Pharmaceutical Lead Discovery

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<%=company%> Biosystems (Foster City, CA) and Biometric Imaging Inc. (BMI) have instituted a Technology Access Program for their FMAT platform for homogeneous live-cell and bead-based high- throughput screening assays. Designed to reduce time and costs associated with assay development and high-throughput screening, FMAT includes the instrument platform, licensee-specified enhancements, hardware and software improvements, training and technical support, maintenance and repairs, consulting on assay and reagent design, and development and supply of customized fluorescent-labeled assay components.

"The significant trends in high-throughput screening include more cell-based assays, chemiluminescence and fluorescence, which replace radioactivity, homogeneous assay formats, multiplexing and smaller assay volumes in higher density plates," said Jon P. Miller, director of pharmaceutical marketing at PE Biosystems. "We concluded that BMI's microvolume fluorimetry, which is the basis for FMAT, is the only platform that meets all these needs today and can evolve to meet the ever increasing demands of drug discovery. FMAT also leverages PE Biosystems' established expertise in fluorescent dyes, conjugation chemistries and assay development."

Screening applications include cell-and bead-based assays for:

  • receptor binding enzyme inhibition
  • cell surface expression of receptors
  • adhesion molecules and other proteins
  • soluble factors, gene expression, cell function, apoptosis and cytotoxicity.

At throughputs of 75,000 assays per day, FMAT differentiates between background fluorescence and that associated with cells or beads. This cell-by-cell (or bead-by-bead) analysis eliminates the need for wash (or other separation) steps and creates mix-and-read screens that simplify assay development, reduce the number of assay steps and improve data quality.

According to PE Biosystems, FMAT works equally well with 96-, 384-, 864- and 1536-well plates because it interrogates a one-square-millimeter field within each well. Engineered with a 633-nm laser and designed to use red fluorescent dyes, FMAT avoids cellular autofluorescence and provides a sensitivity of 5,000 fluorochromes per cell or bead.

This very high sensitivity reduces reagent use and yields a 100-fold decrease in cost per assay. Yielding low CV's with as few as 50 cells per field, FMAT further reduces the cost per assay by decreasing the number of cells required per well. Using two different fluorescent dyes and the system's two detectors, FMAT enables multiplexing of screens.

BMI was founded in 1991 to address the critical need for standardized cell function diagnostics in the emerging field of cell therapy. Cell therapy uses transfused cells from a patient or donor to achieve a desired therapeutic effect in diseases such as cancer and AIDS. The company's patented microvolume fluorimetry technology provides rapid, precise and easy-to-perform cell enumeration, as well as cell characterization in routine clinical settings. Biometric's cell therapy products are designed to ensure the integrity of transfused cells, optimize cell therapy procedures, and monitor both disease progression and the efficacy of therapy.

For more information: Jon P. Miller, Perkin-Elmer Applied Biosystems, 850 Lincoln Centre Dr., Foster City, CA 94404. Tel: 650-638-5265.