Timur Samatov, Vladimir Galatenko, Evotec SE, Göttingen
Today, Omics data is recognized as having great value for drug discovery. This is driven by the need to make informed decisions and enabled by the technology development in wet lab data generation as well as in in silico tools for data analysis. Transcriptome profiling is an efficient way to get deep insights into the complex biology of cellular model systems. Implementing transcriptomics in a high throughput screening format opens unprecedented opportunities for large-scale quantification of cellular responses to small molecule and ASO treatment, gene manipulation, and other perturbations.
Evotec’s high-throughput transcriptomics platform ScreenSeq™ belongs to the company’s PanOmics industrialized data generation portfolio. It follows the strategy of specific barcoding of individual samples in 384 well plate format followed by pooled sequencing. The workflow has been validated for more than 150 cellular models. It is highly automated, scalable, and quality controlled.
Data processing, starting from basic quality control and up to differential gene expression and downstream analyses, is performed using automated pipelines on a high-performance compute cluster. Sample meta-data is retrieved from Electronic Laboratory Notebooks and linked with the data. Interactive data exploration is performed in PanHunter, Evotec’s interactive data analysis platform. High-throughput workflows enable efficient employment of ScreenSeq™ data, in particular, for target identification, hit prioritization, and drug safety evaluation.
A high level of automation allows the ScreenSeq™ platform to support a growing spectrum of drug discovery activities, which was reflected by reaching an important milestone of 2 Mio transcriptomes analyzed by mid of 2024.
