The University Children’s Hospital Zurich is the largest center for pediatrics and pediatric surgery in Switzerland, and one of the leading children’s hospitals worldwide. It conducts numerous fundamental research and clinical studies into disease mechanisms spanning all areas of medicine – including immunology, cancer, cardiology, diabetes and rare genetic diseases – to support the development of new treatments suitable for children and adolescents. The oncology research group at the hospital studies pediatric cancer metabolism at a cellular and whole organism level, focusing on identifying mutation-induced metabolic vulnerabilities to target with novel treatment strategies. This translational research also seeks to contribute to improving the efficacy of existing chemotherapies in routine clinical use to enhance patient outcomes and reduce side effects. Dr Raphael Morscher, head of the oncology research group, explained the importance of his lab’s work: “More than half of the children with relapsed refractory cancers die from their disease, so novel therapies are urgently needed to treat this high risk patient group. We’re also concerned with developing lower toxicity drugs to limit the long-term genotoxic effects of cancer treatment.”

The Morscher Lab has been using the ASSIST PLUS pipetting robot since 2022 for seeding cells extracted from the hospital’s clinical samples. These cells are then used in drug screening, survival assays and live cell staining. Prior to this, team members had been seeding cells entirely by hand, which opened up opportunities for manual errors and greatly limited the lab’s productivity and throughput. These challenges prompted the group to implement a semi-automated workflow with ASSIST PLUS. Raphael explained the rationale behind the adoption of this liquid handling platform in his lab: “Semi-automation with ASSIST PLUS has significantly reduced the time it takes for us to seed our 96 well plates, enabling us to run more plates in a day, as well as giving us more hands-free time to perform other tasks. Removing the need to perform these repetitive pipetting tasks by hand makes a huge difference to our small, busy team, and the time gains have enabled us to increase the lab’s throughput by up to 50 percent.”

“In the past, we often missed a well or double dispensed wells when pipetting manually, which negatively affected the repeatability and reliability of our results,” he continued. “The new INTEGRA platform has noticeably reduced the variability between samples and plates through consistent liquid dispensing, and gives us peace of mind that we can eliminate human error so all pipetting steps are carried out exactly the same way every time.”

The Morscher Lab decided to partner with INTEGRA based on its reputation for producing high quality life sciences equipment, coupled with colleagues’ personal recommendations by word of mouth. Raphael added: “The wide range of pipetting volumes available for use on ASSIST PLUS spans from 0.5 to 1250 μl, and is highly convenient, providing us with the flexibility we need to quickly adapt to different sample numbers and cell seeding needs, as well as to perform other liquid handling tasks. For example, we use the pipetting platform for our qPCR runs on a daily basis, a testament to the device’s versatility. In addition, the intuitive VIALAB pipette automation software is very easy to use and makes it possible for us to quickly create our protocols, even without any prior programming knowledge.”

“The whole installation process was smooth and straightforward, and whenever we need support, the INTEGRA team is extremely responsive and helpful. This allows us to avoid downtime and continue making progress toward scientific breakthroughs that will support the development of highly effective treatments for pediatric cancers in the coming years,” he concluded.

Learn more about the Morscher lab’s cutting-edge translational research by watching this insightful webinar, Precision oncology targeting cancer metabolism, presented by Raphael.