Standardized high-throughput evaluation of cell-based compound screens

BACKGROUND: High-throughput screening of pharmaceutical compound activity in tissue culture experiments requires time-consuming repeated analysis of the large amounts of data generated. Automation of the evaluation procedure and assessment of measurement accuracy can save time and improve the comparability of results. RESULTS: We present a tool for simultaneous evaluation of an arbitrary number of compound screens including a standardized statistical validation. It is provided as a novel R package with a Tcl/Tk-based GUI for convenient use in the lab and runs on usual platforms like Linux, Windows and Mac OS. In a compound screen of lung cancer cells, the tool was successfully and efficiently applied for data analysis. CONCLUSION: The package provides an efficient and intuitive platform for automatic evaluation of compound screens, improving the performance and standardization of data analysis.