Standard Practice
At the International Centre for Kinase Profiling (ICKP) we understand that you want to ensure that the data you receive is of the highest quality. Since inception, ICKP has utilized the highest quality control measures – in line with those implemented in Biotech and Pharma.
There are several industry standard QC procedures that are used to validate each screen. These include:
- Quantifying the Z’ (further information)
- The Z’ value is a measure of how robust your assay is and thus how reliable the resulting data is
- IC50 confirmation of known inhibitors
- Every batch of ten plates we add a further plate containing eight protein kinase inhibitors with known effects on the activities of each of the protein kinases in the panel.
- These inhibitors are plated at ten different concentrations across the plate enabling IC50s to be calculated every month.
Protein Kinases – Additional QC Measures
Reproducibility in assay performance is critical to building confidence – in your results and in the ICKPs service. By including additional QC measures, we can ensure that screens are comparable from different screen dates, and compare compounds’ performance against known inhibitor compounds. The aim here is to have identified at least 2 inhibitors for every kinase in the panel.
The log IC50 value must fall within a half log unit of the rolling mean in order for the run to pass our QC. Z’ values are calculated for each plate and must be greater than 0.6 to pass our QC. If a plate fails QC it is re-run at no extra cost to the customer.
Lipid Kinases – Additional QC Measures
Reproducibility in assay performance is critical to building confidence – in your results and in the ICKPs service. By including additional QC measures, we can ensure that screens are comparable from different screen dates, and compare compounds’ performance against known inhibitor compounds. The aim here is to have identified at least 2 inhibitors for every kinase in the panel. There are few known lipid kinase inhibitors. As a result, the ICKP team has identified a representative sample of inhibitors for the bulk of the lipid kinases within this panel.
The QC procedures for lipid kinases are the same as those for protein kinases except the IC50 value must fall within a 10 fold window either side of the rolling mean and the Z' must be greater than 0.5.
