A high-throughput soft agar assay for identification of anticancer compound

  • J Biomol Screen. 2007 Oct;12(7):938-45. doi: 10.1177/1087057107306130.
Steven N Anderson  1 ,  Danli L Towne ,  David J Burns ,  Usha Warrior
Affiliations
  • 1. Abbott Laboratories, Global Pharmaceutical Research and Development, Department of Biological Screening, Abbott Park, IL, USA.
PMID: 17942786 DOI: 10.1177/1087057107306130
Abstract

A 384-well soft agar assay was developed to identify potential novel Anticancer compounds. Normally used to detect cell transformation, the assay is used here to quantitate cell proliferation in a 3-dimensional (3-D) anchorage-independent format. HCC827 cells, which are highly sensitive to epithelial growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors, were used to develop the method and a set of 9600 compounds used to validate the assay. Results were compared to a monolayer assay using the same compound set. The assay provides a robust method to discover compounds that could be missed using traditional monolayer formats.