High-throughput screening (HTS) is a drug discovery process that allows automated testing of large numbers of chemical and/or biological compounds for a specific biological target. ... They accelerate target analysis, as large scale compound libraries can quickly be screened in a cost effective way.

What is considered high throughput?

Although there is no formal definition, an assay is considered high-throughput if hundreds of chemicals can be run in a minimum of 96 or 384 well format, and up to 1536 well format, within a limited period of time, usually days to weeks.

How long does high throughput screening take?

HTS is expensive and time-consuming.

The time and cost associated with each step vary with the complexity of the target and assay; however, the compound screening step typically takes from 1 week (for a focused screen of a set of 10,000 compounds) to 1–3 months (for HTS of 1 million compounds).