ICECAP: an integrated, general-purpose, automation-assisted IC50/EC50 assay platform.

Background: IC50 and EC50 values are commonly used to evaluate drug potency. Mass spectrometry (MS)-centric bioanalytical and biomarker labs are now conducting IC50/EC50 assays, which, if done manually, are tedious and error-prone. Existing bioanalytical sample preparation automation systems cannot meet IC50/EC50 assay throughput demand. Result: A general-purpose, automation-assisted IC50/EC50 assay platform was developed to automate the calculations of spiking solutions and the matrix solutions preparation scheme, the actual spiking and matrix solutions preparations, as well as the flexible sample extraction procedures after incubation. In addition, the platform also automates the data extraction, nonlinear regression curve fitting, computation of IC50/EC50 values, graphing, and reporting. Conclusion: The automation-assisted IC50/EC50 assay platform can process the whole class of assays of varying assay conditions. In each run, the system can handle up to 32 compounds and up to 10 concentration levels pe...