Screening

Recently, automation qualified microscopy as a well estab-lished screening technique. Screening equipment ranges from simple motorized microscopes and computer controlled stages to fully automated imaging systems including robotics and cell culture incubation environments. Today’s high per-formance computers allow for a rapid high content image processing as well as the storage of large amounts of data. Screening in microscopy is applied to investigate structure formation as in tube formation assays, morphological changes as in live dead assays, or molecular interaction and protein (co-)localization via fluorescence.

Multi Well Plates

Multi well plates have been used in high throughput screening for many years. Standard multi well plates have a 1mm thick bottom and are made of Polystyrene. These plates are neither suited for high resolution nor fluorescence microscopy.

The ibidi technology provides all important features for enhanced microscopy: cover slip like bottom of standard #1.5 thickness, extremely low autofluorescence in combination with the unique tissue culture treatment ibiTreat. In the form of the µ-Slides and µ-Dishes, the ibidi technology has proven to be biocompatible with immortalized cell lines as well as many primary cells. Another remarkable feature is the excellent stability against all common solvents used in cell based assays.

High content screening is the answer to the demands of Systems Biology requiring multiple parameters to be measured from one single cell experiment. Besides optical techniques, screening can also be performed in a non-invasive style via the impedance based ECIS technology.

ibidi develops solutions for multiwell plates ranging from 6 wells up to 384 wells. The production process is scalable even in case of larger well numbers. Unlike plates with glass bottoms glued to bottomless Polystyrene plates, the ibidi bonding technique connects the bottom to the raw plate avoiding the use of any glue. It is therefore independent from the complexity of the top part such as the well number and size of micro structures.

Specific Screening Solutions

ibidi offers OEM solutions for custom-specific screening consumables. We can adapt any consumable to the needs of your high content and high throughput screening instrumentation as well as to the requirements of the specific cell culture and test environment itself.

There is nearly no restriction in possible designs of screening plates for specific applications. Besides multi well plates we also recommend taking micro-channels into account when thinking about small reagent volumes and cell numbers. In closed geometries evaporation is minimized while optical quality is improved. Only in micro-channels phase contrast can be applied on sample volumes of several µl.