Past, present, and future of high content screening and the field of cellomics.

High content screening (HCS) was created in 1996 to offer a new platform that could be used to permit relatively high-throughput screening of cells, in which each cell in an array would be analyzed at a sub-cellular resolution using multicolored, fluorescence-based reagents for both specificity and sensitivity. We developed HCS with the perspective of the history of the development of the automated DNA sequencers that revolutionized the field of genomics. Furthermore, HCS was based on a history of important developments in modern cytology. HCS integrates the instrumentation, application software, reagents, sample preparation, and informatics/bioinformatics required to rapidly flow from producing data, generating information, and ultimately creating new cellular knowledge. The HCS platform is beginning to have an important impact on early drug discovery, basic research in systems cell biology, and is expected to play a role in personalized medicine.