Affordable Low-volume Printed High-throughput Assays (Project ALPHA)

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There are major global health challenges where we need to discover new drugs urgently, such as when tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR) or when driving new approaches to cancer treatment. Our ability to identify the right treatments is directly linked to how many potential drugs can be tested against the ever growing range of targets. National investments in responding to these challenges has been significant with large, centralised investments in facilities that can use high-throughput screening techniques to test large numbers of potential drugs. Through this project we want to now scale-out the testing capability to reach unprecedented numbers of researchers, giving as many labs as possible the research tools to test ideas rapidly by dramatically decreasing expensive reagent use and the size of equipment footprint, dropping the currently prohibitive costs for most labs.These tests are carried out in assays so miniaturising the required sample or reagent volumes is critical to maximising the number of possible tests. Miniaturisation has been a focus since the 1990s, enabling more parallel analyses. While rare in an academic environment, there are 3456 reaction zones, or wells, on the most advanced industrial plates, each carrying out one assay, testing a drug with a target. This proposal is pushing to drive a dramatic shift to over 17 million tests in the same plate size, with each well providing a 3D, biologically relevant, micro-environment for cell-drug interactions, mimicking their natural environment.The unique core printed technology is developed in Department of Engineering, working with Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology and Cancer Research UK (Cambridge Centre) for this proof-of-concept. The cutting edge discovery by the PI and co-I Researcher is that inkjet printed drops can be captured at fluid surfaces, with each trapped as a microscale well. The PI has previously reported controlling and capturing similar arrays of liquid droplets. 50,000 times less material is needed per well and the surprising ease of liquid handling requires relatively simple robotics. There is digital control over the creation of the 'plate' for every array of assays, turning each to a user-defined size. This minimises waste dramatically while also ensuring the lowest possible environmental impact through minimal reagent and plastics material usage. The team aims to ensure affordability and rapid research uptake by coupling reagent minimisation with simple off-the-shelf automation.