Objective

Phosphoinositide 3-kinase alpha (PI3Kα) is frequently implicated in human cancer because of its role in the induction of cell proliferation and survival and is highly sought after as a drug development target. High-throughput screening efforts to identify inhibitors of PI3Kα have been widely conducted in the pharmaceutical industry. Compounds identified from high-throughput screening efforts for various targets in the PI3K pathway have developed into potential anti-cancer drugs.   The ongoing need to reduce screening costs has led to the growing trend toward miniaturization. The Echo series of liquid handlers combined with the newly released Echo qualified Reservoir affords a reduction in transfer volume of both compounds and bulk assay reagents while increasing throughput and maintaining data quality. Here, we show a fully automated approach utilizing the Labcyte Access Workstation to integrate both the Echo 525 and Echo 555 liquid handlers on the same workstation in addition to the BMG LABTECH PHERAstar FS multimode plate reader to greatly facilitate assay execution in the identification of potential PI3K inhibitors.