Hi,
Has anybody tried to apply drugs directly on NGM plates and check for effect on worms or are liquid cultures the best way for drug treatments?
Thanks
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I’ve done drug treatments by directly applying 50-100 uL onto the surface of the agar as well as adding it directly to molten agar before pouring plates. I got about the same effect by concentration between the two with drugs I’ve worked with, but I’m sure it can vary. I have to use a relatively high dosage to penetrate the cuticle. If you do apply drug to surface of agar be sure to give it at least 3 hours to diffuse into the agar. Lots of literature out there with this kind of exposure. Off top of my head I can think of drugs like fluoxetine and other SSRI’s having this kind of drug exposure in c elegans for specific protocols.
Of course bro
Yeah, many people do apply drugs directly on NGM plates — either by spreading the compound on the surface or mixing it with the bacteria. This way, worms get continuous exposure to the drug.
But if you need precise concentration control or your compound is unstable, then liquid culture is usually a better option since the drug stays evenly distributed.
So honestly, it depends on your goal — for chronic exposure, plates work well; for short-term or dose-sensitive studies, liquid culture is the way to go.
That’s a great point — and yeah, diffusion time really does make a difference depending on the compound. Some labs are now even using computational modeling to predict drug penetration and distribution in C. elegans or agar-based systems before doing wet-lab trials.
I recently came across work from Ardigen, an AI-powered CRO in Krakow that focuses on AI-driven drug discovery and precision medicine — they’re doing some cool stuff using machine learning to model drug-target interactions and optimize compound behavior in complex biological environments. It’s interesting to think how similar modeling could eventually help fine-tune plate-based exposure methods too.