University of Pennsylvania, Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research
Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) conducts multidisciplinary clinical and basic research studies on the causes and mechanisms that lead to brain dysfunction and degeneration in Alzheimer's Disease (AD), Parkinson's Disease (PD), Motor Neuron Disease and other less common neurodegenerative disorders.
Challenges
UPenn generates small molecules and screens for leads to find new compounds or assays to help understand the diseases' mechanisms. The experiment process is a three stage approach with primary screen, retest and dose-response protocols with candidates being culled out at each step. This dynamic environment presented challenges to capture data from the changing protocols but also for inventory control which was handled manually in Excel and was error-prone.
Solution
TERANODE Design Suite, TERANODE Model Server and TERANODE Integration Plug-ins for Graph Pad (IC50), Envision Importer to automate their inventory process and keep track of lab activity in a central format and location.
Results
Automation allowed for data to feed forward through three tier experiment process
Eliminated manual inventory management, by automatically connecting plates to the specific protocols
Able to do calculations, plate layouts and track samples through a barcoding system
Change protocols on the fly, supporting experiment modifications and other screening activities
Data is automatically stored and logged
Integrated laboratory instruments with data import and export
