A Collection of Useful Nuisance Compounds (CONS) for Interrogation of Bioassay Integrity

High-throughput screening (HTS) is a crucial technique
for identifying
potential hits to fuel drug discovery pipelines. However, this process
naturally concentrates nuisance compounds that are not optimizable
yet signal positively in a convincing manner. To be able to understand
what types of nuisance compounds a particular assay is sensitive to,
would be of great utility in being able to prioritize progressable
over nonprogressable screening hits. In this study, we present a carefully
compiled set of over 100 nuisance compounds that are known to interfere
with assay readouts in either phenotypic or target-based screenings.
Readily accessible in an assay-ready screening plate, we believe this
nuisance compound set will be of great interest to the research community,
helping to establish high-quality HTS assays and identify promising,
optimizable hits.