A pipette for every application in every lab
Dr Kerry Oliver, President and CSO of Radix BioSolutions, explained: “We mainly work with the human and veterinary pharmaceutical sector, but also a number of university researchers that routinely collaborate with these companies, performing a real mixture of research and routine testing. Our R&D services cover everything from quantifying biomarkers and reagent labeling services to the development and production of multiplexed assays. On the sample testing side, we perform analyses for the presence of a wide range of biomarkers and biotherapeutics in both livestock and companion animals, and have developed a number of methods and processes for different sample matrices.”
The benefits of a family of products
INTEGRA offers a range of productive pipetting products designed to simplify liquid handling workflows, and Radix uses a whole family of INTEGRA products for this reason, including the EVOLVE manual pipettes, VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipettes, VIAFLO 96/384 handheld electronic pipette and the ASSIST PLUS pipetting robot. All INTEGRA systems have been developed to cost-effectively streamline workflows and increase productivity for a range of liquid handling applications, and using a whole collection of INTEGRA products offers a number of advantages. Not only is the same high quality for all your instruments guaranteed, but the time taken to train on new platforms is highly reduced. Additionally, all instruments use the extremely reliable GripTip pipette tips, designed to always be firmly attached and perfectly aligned, ensuring that critical pipetting workflows are not jeopardized by tips that loosen, leak or fall off.
Kerry continued: “It all started when we needed to replace our old set of pipettes. We've used equipment from various suppliers over the years, but I really didn’t like any of the traditional pipettes on the market. INTEGRA’s EVOLVE manual pipettes really intrigued me, so we started to use a couple of the single channels, and I instantly fell in love with them! Not only are they ergonomic, but you can change volumes quickly and easily. From there, we added the VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipettes to our collection as our pipetting workload increased. They are the only pipette with automated spacing on the market, and this makes them perfect for transferring samples between labware with different spacing, especially from tube racks to 96 and 384 well plates.”
Addressing increasing throughput
Radix also added a VIAFLO 96/384 and an ASSIST PLUS to its inventory, to increase throughput and reduce errors as demand for its services grew. Kerry added: “We chose the ASSIST PLUS for a variety of reasons, but especially because it met our need for a cost-effective benchtop automated pipetting platform. The system is flexible and easy to program, while sitting on a small footprint. We use both the VIAFLO 96/384 and the ASSIST PLUS in all stages of our service protocols, from sample prep and assay set-up to reagent addition.”
“A majority of our samples arrive in 96-well formats, so we normally use the VIAFLO 96/384 to perform simultaneous sample aliquoting and dilutions for entire plates. We then have the ASSIST PLUS running plate preparation for assays, including using the VOYAGER’s adjustable tip spacing to reformat samples to automation-friendly layouts where necessary. This means that we can easily transfer our samples from the VIAFLO 96/384 to the ASSIST PLUS, and use it to dispense the samples, reagents and even beads for luminescence-based assays. It saves us a lot of time, and we have seen our day-to-day assay consistency improve since using the automation systems; our inter-assay CVs have dropped to below 10 % now, while the chance of missing wells is eliminated.”
“The range of options for these systems allows us to perform multiple things at the same time, and we use them in parallel – performing different parts of an assay to speed up our workflow and improve the overall process. This simply wouldn’t be possible with one larger pipetting system that would only be able to perform one task at a time, while also taking up a far larger footprint and costing considerably more.”
“We have a great relationship with the INTEGRA team, and they are always there to answer any questions. We’re able to openly discuss our needs, and they are very open to taking suggestions for their product development pipeline. Overall, the systems have been brilliant in all aspects of our work, streamlining our workflows and, looking forward, we are now planning to acquire another VIAFLO 96/384 and ASSIST PLUS.”