Patent ID: 6890485

Claim:
A high throughput chemical screening system comprising: a chemical library comprising storage locations for a plurality of multi-well plates, each of which comprises individual chemical wells for containing samples; a computer controlled chemical well retriever for programmable selection and retrieval of at least one of said multiwell plates comprising selected ones of said chemical wells; a transport path coupled to said chemical library for receiving said at least one multiwell plate from and returning said at least one multiwell plate to said chemical library; and a plurality of automated liquid handling devices having aspiration/dispensation heads operatively coupled to said transport path, whereby said high throughput chemical screening system is configured to process at least approximately 25,000 chemical samples in a 24 hour period; wherein said system is programmable via a user interface to retrieve and handle either (a) the samples from every one of the chemical wells of said at least one multiwell plate or (b) the samples from a subset of chemical wells within said at least one multiwell plate.