LIMS & Lab Automation
Collaboration to Automate Pre-analytical Processing of Whole Blood Samples Announced
Tecan has launched the Fluent® Mix and Pierce Workstation* to provide end-to-end automation for whole blood pipetting in clinical environments. This newly developed instrument configuration is intended to standardise pre-analytical sample handling and mixing, and is part of an ongoing collaboration with Qiagen to optimise sample preparation for latent tuberculosis (TB) testing with the QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus assay.
The Fluent Mix and Pierce Workstation provides a fully automated workflow, using a Flexible Channel Arm™ equipped with Tecan Piercing Tips™ to aliquot whole blood samples directly from vacuum blood collection tubes or septum-capped tubes - without the need for manual lid removal. This reduces the risk of laboratory staff coming into contact with infectious materials, and saves valuable time when performing tube-to-tube or tube-to-plate transfers and whole blood assays. The workstation also features the newly developed Tecan Tube Rotator™ - which provides 360-degree tube mixing to maintain whole blood samples in suspension without haemolysis - and includes barcode scanning for both primary and secondary tubes to ensure full process traceability for clinical settings.
Dr Klaus Lun, Executive Vice President and Head of the Life Sciences Business Division at Tecan, stated: “Our vision at Tecan is to empower every laboratory, every day, around the world, and we are delighted to collaborate with Qiagen - a global leader in the important area of modern latent TB detection - to help even more labs to increase productivity and reduce processing errors through automation of tedious manual steps.”
Jean-Pascal Viola, Senior Vice President, Head of the Molecular Diagnostics Business Area and Corporate Business Development at Qiagen NV, added: “We are pleased to expand our collaboration with Tecan – a proven leader with a track record of providing best-in-class liquid handling technology solutions - to further improve the automation of pre-analytical whole blood processing. This partnershipwill greatly accelerate the adoption and ease of processing of single-tube samples for latent TB detection.”
More information online:
ilmt.co/PL/kdPW 54496pr@reply-direct.com
Bio-Safety Enclosures for Liquid Handling Automation
Bigneat offers a specialised range of Laboratory Automation Enclosures for use with liquid handling platforms/robotics, capable of meeting high- throughput requirements.
The LAC2 Class II type enclosure, is designed and constructed following years of experience and provides for Operator and Sample/Process protection (sterility) with doors in closed or open conditions.
Bigneat are proud to be a supplier to many pharmaceutical sites around the globe to aid in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. As with all of their products, Bigneat does not operate on a ‘one size fits all’ strategy. Please get in touch should you wish to find out more.
From the conceptual design phase through to customer engagement, manufacturing and installation of our enclosures, Bigneat are able to ensure that their customers achieve the very best performance from their system and process whilst ensuring ease of access to the enclosure interior for in-situ maintenance of installed instrumentation and robotics.
Bigneat enclosures provide excellent visibility of the enclosed system. More information online:
ilmt.co/PL/oDJw
54149pr@reply-direct.com
Robotic System for Ultra-High Throughput SARS-CoV-2 Testing
Ziath reports how it has worked with the Hubrecht Institute which has developed a pioneering automated test robot, called STRIP-1, which can process up to 20,000 samples for SARS-CoV-2 testing in just 24 hours.
Wouter de Laat and Marvin Tanenbaum, group leaders at the Hubrecht Institute, worked closely with Martijn Bosch, automation specialist at local instrument manufacturer Genmab to develop STRIP-1. This team decided to adopt 2D-barcoding of the sample tubes throughout the robotic workflow. This was achieved by integrating a Ziath Mirage camera-based 2D barcode reader into the automation platform. The high- speed of reading and decoding offered by the Mirage, around 1 second for a full 96 position rack used in STRIP-1, was a key factor in the choice of Ziath, allowing the robot to reach its maximum potential of 20,000 samples per day.
“We hoped that we could organise everything in a faster and more intelligent way by using robots, so that became our focus almost immediately,” said Wouter De Laat. The STRIP-1 robot was designed by Martijn Bosch according to optimisation of our SARS-CoV-2 test requirements. Bosch commented: “Not just the new robot system, but also the whole chain of events posed a challenge. From sample collection, registration, the logistics and the tracking of samples to the test itself and reporting the results, basically the entire chain of events
from patient to test and back, that was the big challenge.” The Ziath Mirage ensures correct registration, tracking and reporting of the patient samples as they arrive in the lab and are re-formatted into 384-well PCR plates to increase throughput whilst conserving valuable and currently scarce PCR reagents.
The robot was ordered from Swiss automation company Tecan, who delivered and installed it just before Christmas 2020 at PAMM medical microbiology laboratory in Veldhoven, Netherlands. On 27th January 2021, Hugo de Jonge from the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, visited the robot at the PAMM laboratory, as the Dutch government plans to order five more STRIP-1 systems in the future, if the validation procedure delivers the expected results. Together, these robots will be able to process more than 100,000 samples per 24 hours.
See the STRIP-1 in action:
ilmt.co/PL/qDL5 More information online:
ilmt.co/PL/rWOQ
54307pr@reply-direct.com
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