Cellular Screening Center

773.702.4872

Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery
900 E 57th Street
Room 4160
Chicago, IL 60637

The Cellular Screening Center (CSC) is a high-throughput screening facility that performs small molecule and siRNA screens.  It has over 150,000 small molecules distributed among 11 diverse compound libraries, as well as the 4 Dharmacon Human siRNA library.  The CSC is also a center for cell line models and currently holds over 250 cell lines with an emphasis on cancer cell lines. The CSC is directed by Dr. Geoffrey Greene and located in the Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery.  Dr. Eugene Xu, director, manages the day-to-day operation of the facility.  CSC lab space houses a BioBubble softwall cleanroom area for the screens. It is certified to be ISO 5 cleanroom standard. This enclosure ensures a high degree of confidence in assays due to the vastly reduced risk of contamination in this environment. The CSC robotic deck includes a workstation robot for sample prep, plate design and around the clock screens. It is integrated with 3 readers, 4 liquid handlers and 2 storage spaces. The Spinnaker robot is able to provide self-correcting precision and sample tracking with its built-in machine vision system. It has 4-axis to reach for a variety positions as needed. The Momentum automation software allows the ease of integration of various workflows on demand.

CSC has partnered with the Center for Research Informatics (CRI) at The University of Chicago to maintain CSC databases.  All data that is obtained from the readers are automatically stored at a remote server where it is backed up nightly. The CSC has bioinformatics support to maintain the security of the data, the availability of data, and to aid in data analysis. The core may be identified in publications as The University of Chicago Cellular Screening (RRID:SCR_017914).