Miniaturization of the BlaM assay for HTS. The BlaM assay was miniaturized and optimized for 384-half-well plates to achieve a fourfold reduction in the amount of CCF4-AM substrate required for the HTS campaign. (A) Performance of the miniaturized BlaM assay in 384-half-well plate format, using R3A Env-pseudotyped viruses. Robust fusion signal with S/B ratio of 15 and Z′ of 0.7 was obtained, indicating a high-quality assay for HTS. (B) Validation of the miniaturized BlaM assay for R3A Env-pseudotyped viruses, using an active compound, NF279, similar to those identified by a pilot screen. The effect of NF279 is expressed as % of control and the data shown are average and SD from triplicate samples. The IC50 was determined using GraphPad Prism.