Optical oxygen sensing systems for drug discovery applications: Respirometric Screening Technology (RST)

Quenched-fluorescence oxygen sensing allows non-chemical, reversible, real-time monitoring of molecular oxygen and rates of oxygen consumption in biological samples. Using this approach we have developed Respirometric Screening Technology (RST); a platform which facilitates the convenient analysis of cellular oxygen uptake. This in turn allows the investigation of compounds and processes which affect respiratory activity. The RST platform employs soluble phosphorescent oxygen-sensitive probes, which may be assessed in standard microtitter plates on a fluorescence plate reader. New formats of RST assays and time-resolved fluorescence detection instrumentation developed by Luxcel provide improvements in assay sensitivity, miniaturization and overall performance. RST has a diverse range of applications in drug discovery area including high throughput analysis of mitochondrial function; studies of mechanisms of toxicity and apoptosis; cell and animal based screening of compound libraries and environmental samples; and, sterility testing. RST has been successfully validated with a range of practical targets and adopted by several leading pharmaceutical companies.