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Approximately 10% of the world’s population is at risk of schistosomiasis, a disease of poverty caused by theSchistosomaparasite. To facilitate drug discovery for this complex flatworm, we developed an automated high-content screen to quantify the multidimensional responses ofSchistosoma mansonipost-infective larvae (somules) to chemical insult. We describe an integrated platform to process worms at scale, collect time-lapsed, bright-field images, segment highly variable and touching worms, and then store, visualize, and query dynamic phenotypes. To demonstrate the methodology, we treated somules with seven drugs that generated diverse responses and evaluated 45 static and kinetic response descriptors relative to concentration and time. For compound screening, we used the Mahalanobis distance to compare multidimensional phenotypic effects induced by 1323 approved drugs. Overall, we characterize both known anti-schistosomals and identify new bioactives. Apart from facilitating drug discovery, the multidimensional quantification provided by this platform will allow mapping of chemistry to phenotype.

Drug‐induced liver injury is an important cause of non‐approval in drug development and the withdrawal of already approved drugs from the market. Screening human hepatic cell lines for toxicity has been used extensively to predict drug‐induced liver injury in preclinical drug development. Assessing hepatic‐cell health with more diverse markers will increase the value of in vitro assays and help predict the mechanism of toxicity. We describe three live cell‐based assays using HepG2 cells to measure cell health parameters indicative of hepatotoxicity. The first assay measures cellular ATP levels using luciferase. The second and third assays are multiparametric high‐content screens covering a panel of cell health markers including cell count, mitochondrial membrane potential and structure, nuclear morphology, vacuolar density, and reactive oxygen species and glutathione levels. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Basic Protocol 1: Measurement of cellular ATP content

Basic Protocol 2: High‐content analysis assay to assess cell count, mitochondrial membrane potential and structure, and reactive oxygen species

Basic Protocol 3: High‐content analysis assay to assess nuclear morphology, vacuoles, and glutathione content

Support Protocol 1: Subculturing and maintaining HepG2 cells

Support Protocol 2: Plating HepG2 cell line

Support Protocol 3: Transferring compounds by pin tool

Support Protocol 4: Generating dose‐response curves