(A) False-positives in the primary assay used for HTS are generally eliminated upon testing in an orthogonal assay (see Box 1) conducted on all compounds with greater than average activity. (i and ii) Each dot in the scatter plot represents a compound, plotted based on its percent activity in an assay, in this case, an assay to identify inhibitors. In the example shown, a 3 standard deviation (s.d.) threshold value (dotted line) was used to qualify a compound as active. (i) Results from a primary assay to identify compounds with inhibitor activity, with the percentage of active compounds at 5% of the total screened (found below 3s.d. line). (ii) Following an orthogonal assay, 95% of the active compounds are found to be false positives due to assay interference, leaving only a few genuine actives (red dots; 0.25% of compounds screened). (B) Fluorescent compounds (an example of which is shown) behave much like genuine actives, demonstrating concentration dependence (blue dots in scatter plot) that is reproducible, as shown here for results of a fluorescence-based HTS run in the blue spectral range. Sporadic fluorescence interference is also seen (grey dots), but is not reproducible and does not show concentration dependence (adapted from Simeonov et al., 2008 [14]). (C) Compound interference that directly interacts with an enzymatic reporter, such as firefly luciferase, is shown here. This type of compound interference also demonstrates compound concentration dependence (orange concentration response curve – CRC), and in this specific case, the compound is a competitive inhibitor of firefly luciferase (green CRCs).