A Quantitative High-Throughput Screening Data Analysis Pipeline for Activity Profiling.

The US Tox21 program has developed in vitro assays to test large collections of environmental chemicals in a quantitative high-throughput screening (qHTS) format, using triplicate 15-dose titrations to generate over 50 million data points to date. Counter screens are also employed to minimize interferences from non-target-specific assay artifacts, such as compound auto fluorescence and cytotoxicity. New data analysis approaches are needed to integrate these data and characterize the activities observed from these assays. Here, we describe a complete analysis pipeline that evaluates these qHTS data for technical quality in terms of signal reproducibility. We integrate signals from repeated assay runs, primary readouts, and counter screens to produce a final call on on-target compound activity.