Automated soft agar assay for the high-throughput screening of anticancer compounds.

We have established an automated soft agar colony formation assay that can be used as a potent tool in experimental tumor therapy studies as well as anticancer compound screening. It allows the direct and simultaneous comparison of the effects of a high number of anticancer compounds on the anchorage-independent growth of a variety of tumor cell lines. By making use of a commercially available automated pipetting system, the user gets results of excellent quality within 1 week and does not need special cell culture practice.