Deadline to register on this form is April 18, 2025. Here is a Google Calendar link for the event. Please click here for the tentative agenda. Registration is free for all attendees; to make an optional donation, please use this link. Vendors, please see this page for vendor table info. Click here to download the flyer PNG. Click here to read a plain text version of this flyer.
Our article was the cover-featured, first-listed research paper in the January 15 issue of ChemBioChem.
The work was started by Tannia Lau during her PhD thesis in Scott Lokey’s lab. For her project, machine learning methods were explored for analyzing cytological profiling screen data from macrophages, collected in the CSC. This is a very hot topic for high content screening. So while Tannia had since graduated and moved to a career in industry at Eli Lilly & Co, we were excited to validate and investigate the hits from her screen, and get it over the finish line to publication. To do this, we employed the new wetlab capabilities of the revamped CSC. These follow-up studies benefitted from the versatility of the acoustic dispenser, image quality and intuitive quantification tools of the confocal imager, accuracy of the new bulk dispenser, and speed of the new plate washer. The two phases of the project were presented by Tannia and Beverley at the annual Society for Laboratory Automation Sciences. We continue to use these methods in our ongoing studies in natural product drug discovery with the HiFAN team, and welcome collaborators or customers to inquire about having your own samples run through image cytometry for immune-modulating compounds.
Tannia’s PhD research was funded in 2019-2020 by a prestigious NIH F31 Kirschstein-NRSA fellowship, building upon her prior work supported by UCSC’s Initiative for Maximizing Student Development, a Navajo Scholarship, and Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). We are grateful to these programs for continuing to support work of excellent trainees like Tannia.
Are you interested in the advantages of high throughput robotically-controlled assays and screens? Do you want to use our “Lamborghini of confocal microscopes” for live cells, organoids, or other imaging studies? Or perhaps you have an application for our freshly purchased chemical compound collections? Well, you’re in luck because, thanks to a donation from the Office of Research, the CSC is welcoming in-house applications for seed funds to facilitate exciting new projects!
—The Application Process—
Applications are done via this Google form. Awards will be announced by November 20, 2023. Following award notice, the team will meet (professor, trainee, and CSC staff), the experiment details will be agreed upon, and a formal quote for the planned work will be generated. The experiments may then commence immediately, subject to the availability of the trainee and CSC staff, and the funds must be expended by May 31, 2024.
—Eligibility—
The applicant must either be a UCSC professor, or a current member of a UCSC professor’s research lab, who has prior permission from the professor to fill out the form. The project must be assigned to a member of the professor’s lab, who will get trained during the course of the experiments, and who will be primarily responsible for planning and executing the experiments, taking notes, and analyzing the results, with the assistance of CSC staff. Individuals can make multiple submissions for consideration.
—Budget—
Awards within the range of $2,000 – $10,000 may be requested. We anticipate awarding 5-10 awards.
The seed funds will be applied to offset recharges incurred at the CSC. This includes recharges for staff time, instrument time, bioinformatics workstations, and compound libraries. The awardee will be allowed to charge a total of less than 20% of the award for purchases of disposables (microplates, reagents, solvents) associated with the proposed experiments.
The award will not cover other projects, follow-up studies, experiments otherwise not described in the application, recharges for other facilities, or salary for the trainees involved.
Depending on the complexity of the project, the seed fund could be enough to cover assay development/pilot experiment and a medium-scale screen. If you already have an assay working, the seed funds could cover a high throughput screen. We offer robots to automate sample prep, multiple analytical mechanisms, and different types of compound libraries.
We welcome any questions about our resources, workflows, and prices to help you develop your application.
We’re hosting an event all about plate reader assays. Please come with your questions to ask the experts! We’ll have a short presentation starting around 12 (from myself and some field application scientists from Revvity) and lots of time for discussion, ending around 2pm. This may be a great opportunity to come get guidance for your seed fund application! Please register so we can get a lunch headcount and all registrants get a 15% discount on kit purchases from Revvity!
In case you’d like to see my slides from today’s talk invited to the Western Association of Core Directors. You’ll likely have to download the .PPT file locally, as the file is too big to preview on the browser. Enjoy!
Thanks to our brilliant summer intern, Kenny, we now have a CSC YouTube channel @UCSC_ChemicalScreeningCenter with several captioned training videos! These will serve as a starting point for new trainees and a refresher for previous trainees. Each piece of equipment has its own playlist, so select to watch the video most relevant to the task you wish to perform. Feel free to comment below with which video you would like to see us make next!
“Rabbitts provides one-on-one training for students and other new users of the center’s facilities. Lokey said the focus on training sets the UCSC center apart from other screening centers.
“It’s valuable experience for the students, and the symposium will give them an opportunity to showcase what they’ve been doing,” he said.”
Full article: https://news.ucsc.edu/2023/04/csc-symposium.html
Ben Abrams, academic/research staff – Life Sciences Microscopy Center. The UCSC Life Sciences Microscopy Center Has Tools for Your Research
Nadia Dzhanbekova, graduate student – Seth Rubin. Chemical Library Screening to Identify Novel Molecular Mechanisms Behind Cell Cycle Arrest
Sahar Hosseinzadeh, graduate student – John MacMillan. Identification of Selective Cytotoxins for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Cell Lines
Karen Hug, graduate student – Victoria Auerbuch Stone. Disruption of the Yersinia pseudotuberculosis T3SS primes bacteria for envelope stress
Rachel Jacobson, Senior Director Research – Spring Discovery. Using Machine Learning to Harness the Complexities of Inflammasome Biology for Novel Drug Discovery
*Aswad Khadilkar, academic/research staff – John MacMillan. Assigning Mechanism of Action To Natural Products In Multiple Biological Contexts Using Gene Expression And Phenotypic Screening Methods Established By The HIFAN Program
*Cindy Liang, graduate student – Angela Brooks. Pairing phenotypic assays with direct RNA sequencing to understand U2AF1 S34F and cigarette smoke’s functional role in lung cancer
Akshar Lohith, PhD Candidate – Scott Lokey and John MacMillan. Advancing Cell Profiling to cover a broad phenotypic space and determine the mechanism of action of diverse perturbations
Gabe Mitchell, industry. Open Innovation @ NITD: targeting the host-pathogen interface during microbial infection
Joseph Morris, lab of Tyler Johnson, Dominican University of California. In Vivo Evaluation of Zampanolide & Thermolysis Reveals Cytotoxicity of Hemi-Aminal Side Chain & Delayed Binding Mode of Dactylolide
Samuel Mussetter, undergraduate student – Crews Lab. Further Evaluation of a Bicyclic Pyrazolines as a 15-Lipoxygenase V-Type Activators – Scrutizining Their 3D Properties
Peter Ngoi, graduate student – Seth Rubin. Structural basis for E2F1 Recognition by E3 Ligase SCF-CyclinF
Beverley Rabbitts, core director of CSC. High content screening and machine learning for identifying novel natural product modulators of the innate immune response.
Francesco Rubbo, industry researcher – Spring Discovery. A Benchmark Dataset for Phenotypic Compound Similarity in Inflammasomes Screens
Diksha Sharma, graduate student – Carrie Partch. Small-molecule screening:PASsing the binding test
*Jaru Taechalertpaisarn, post-doc – Scott Lokey. Discovery of Novel Active Macrocyclic Peptides Through Permeable-First Perspective
Tilini Wijeratne, graduate student – Seth Rubin. B-Myb association with DNA is regulated by its Negative regulatory domain and Cdk phosphorylation
Kevin Yang, graduate student – Scott Lokey. Development and Characterization of Passively Cell-Permeable RNA-Binding Cyclic Peptides
*=giving a talk (plus or minus poster) with this title. The rest are posters only.
We hope you will enjoy this networking opportunity!
Michelle Arkin, Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF.
Ramiro Alejandro Tomasi, Assistant Professor of Buccal Pathology at National University of Cordoba, Argentina.
Tyler Johnson, Associate Professor of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Dominican U of CA.
Joseph Morris, researcher in the lab of Tyler Johnson at Dominican U of CA)
Mary West, Core Facility Director for the Cell and Tissue Analysis Facility (CTAF) and High-Throughput Screening Facility (HTSF).
~~Attn: CSC trainees…The HTSF is recruiting to hire a new screening facility manager!~~
Pingping He, Core Facility Manager for the High-Throughput Screening Facility (HTSF).
Deepa Sridharan, Project Scientist for the High-Throughput Screening Facility (HTSF).
Maddalena Adorno, CEO & Co-Founder at Dorian Therapeutics. LinkedIn
Asheley Bailey, Advanced Technology Account Executive at CDW. LinkedIn
Rachel Bright, Alliance Management and Business Development at Gilead Sciences. LinkedIn
Alix Chan, Lead Scientist at Genentech. LinkedIn
*Paul Fielder, Vice President of Biomarker Development at Genentech. LinkedIn
*David Greenberg, Account Manager at Axion Biosystems. LinkedIn
Maureen Hillenmeyer, CEO & Founder of Hexagon Bio, Inc. LinkedIn
Kelly Huggins, Director of Technology & Strategic Alliances, Therapeutic Discovery at Amgen. LinkedIn
*Tannia Lau, Research Scientist, Genetic Medicine at Eli Lilly. LinkedIn
Gabriel Mitchel, Senior Innovation Scholar, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR). LinkedIn
Gregory Notte, Executive Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Gilead. LinkedIn
*Cameron Pye,Co-Founder at Unnatural Products. LinkedIn
Francesco Rubbo, Staff Machine Learning Scientist at Spring Discovery. LinkedIn
*Josh Schwoshert, Co-Foudner at Unnatural Products. LinkedIn
Shuhei Tomimoto, Sr. Manager at Ono Pharmaceuticals. LinkedIn
*=UCSC Alum
Agilent Technologies
Diana Bogorodskaya, Sales & Business Development. LinkedIn
PerkinElmer
Marc Guerra, Sales Specialist, In Vivo. LinkedIn
Chananat Klomsiri, Sr. Discovery Reagent Sales Specialist. LinkedIn
Bill Ortiz, Principal Sales Specialist, plate readers. LinkedIn
BioLegend (affiliated with Perkin Elmer)
Anisha Madhav. LinkedIn
Robert Adams, Sr. Marketing Coordinator – Trade Shows and Events. LinkedIn
Chemistry and Biochemistry
Phillip Crews, Chem Biochem (emeritus)
Timothy Johnstone
Joseph Konopelski (emeritus)
Scott Lokey, Chem Biochem & Faculty Director of the CSC
John MacMillan, Chem Biochem & VCR
Glenn Millhauser, Chem Biochem & Dept Chair
Seth Rubin, Chem Biochem
Laura Sanchez, Chem Biochem
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Bradley Colquitt
Sharma Upasna
Martha Zuniga
Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology
Vicki Auerbuch Stone, Assoc Faculty Director of the CSC
Karen Ottemann
Michael Patnode
Engineering
Angela Brooks
Daniel Kim
Shelbi Russell
Ali Yanik, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Earth & Planetary Sciences Department
Paul Koch, PBSci Dean
And many more registrants!