Selected category: Cell Biology & Cell Assays

By Aron Gonshor (in collaboration with Nastya Yeska and Dajana Domik) 

Female hormone levels have been measured using blood tests for decades.¹ However, blood sampling is costly, invasive, and often logistically difficult. Consequently, there has...

By Oliver Schmidt

HMGB1 is a key mediator in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2, and increased levels can be an important indicator for COVID-19 understanding and its prognosis. In this final piece in our series, we look at the performance of Tecan’s...

By Oliver Schmidt

In the first article in this series, we looked at how HMGB1 has taken an increasingly important position as a key mediator in the immune response, playing a major role in many diseases, from cancer to coronavirus. There is now...

By Remi Magnan

Low drug efficacy and safety concerns are the main reasons for late-stage withdrawal of drugs in clinical trials and account for 87% of all phase III submission failures. ^[1] Toxicity towards certain organs like the heart, liver or...

By Oliver Schmidt

How the human body deals with infection depends on an individual’s immune response. When looking at the body’s response to SARS-CoV-2, the state of the immune system has a crucial impact on the clinical outcome. For example, HMGB1...

By Remi Magnan

Research using stem cells and stem cell-derived models holds huge promise for drug discovery and therapeutic applications. However, creating, characterizing, maintaining and expanding stem cell-derived models and therapeutics can be a...

By Christian Oberdanner

Live cell imaging is one of the most important techniques in the life sciences today. But behind every great imaging assay, pity the poor scientist grappling with the demands of biological variability and complex kinetic cell...

By Hal Wehrenberg

What happens when lab automation projects are unsuccessful? One out-take is learning what creates a stronger process and methodology. That's exactly what we found at Tecan after working with several hundred customers on lab...

By Christian Oberdanner

With “fake news” topping the headlines these days, we’re painfully aware that hearing just part of the whole story can lead to seriously wrong ideas that can have embarrassing or even disastrous consequences. The same is true...

By David Wold

Today’s hematology labs are faced with escalating demands to deliver robust and accurate blood test results quickly. At the heart of automated diagnostic systems for blood analysis are liquid handling pumps, which must deliver precise...

By Jason Meredith

Automated lab analytics solutions are increasingly taking to the cloud to give labs real-time visibility of instrument and consumables usage. This is valuable information – for example to understand what throughput is available to...

By Hal Wehrenberg

All automation is controlled by software and understanding the differences between options can be complicated. Underestimating the impact of software may set back your budget or critical timelines.

By Simon Fogarty

If you’ve decided you need to incorporate phenotypic screening into your discovery program and you know that one of the new generation of automation platforms is the way forward, what factors should influence your choice?

...

By Severin Heynen

Improving lab procurement processes involves more than just putting e-procurement or lab management software in place. In most cases accessing, managing and analyzing the data that you use to support purchase decisions and feed...

By Severin Heynen

As labs face tighter profit margins and the need to minimize cost of goods, there is increasing pressure to implement more efficient and responsive mechanisms for procurement and inventory management. A large proportion of annual...

By Severin Heynen

As a procurement planner in the competitive life sciences sector, how do you ensure your organization adapts swiftly to the rapidly changing demands of customers and stakeholders? Whether supporting a CRO, pharmaceutical company,...

By Hal Wehrenberg

Congratulations. It took you quite some time and effort to convince your management or institution on the value of investing in automating your experimental or clinical workflow. The applications were submitted, the presentations...

By Oliver Schmidt

In the first article in this series, we looked at how HMGB1 has taken an increasingly important position as a key mediator in the immune response and as such plays a major role in a large number of diseases – from sepsis to cancer....

By Claudio Bui

The demand for advanced medical and diagnostic testing continues to accelerate. Laboratories, hospitals, and emerging consumer genomics companies are demanding quicker test sequences resulting in the design and development of new...

By Oliver Schmidt

As a nuclear protein present in most cell types, HMGB1 (high mobility group box 1) is a key mediator of the immune system in health and disease. Interest in HMGB1 has increased dramatically as the protein has been shown to be...

By Domink Bell

When it’s time to move your biotechnology breakthrough towards commercialization, your specific application workflows may require a custom approach to lab automation. If your requirements are uncommon, there may be no off-the-shelf...

By Michelle Aichele

Are you guilty of making decisions without the data to back them up? In today’s busy labs, mission-critical decisions about laboratory equipment purchases, service contract renewals, consumables spending, and staffing are often...

By Domink Bell

You’ve done your testing on the benchtop and proven that your new biotechnology innovation works in your hands. Now comes the exciting part – turning your solution into a breakthrough product that is ready for broader use and...

By Michelle Aichele

As we move into the 2019 budget cycle with signs of a global economic slowdown on the horizon, laboratory administrators are no doubt feeling the heat. A combination of poor forecasting, inefficient use of resources, and a sudden...

By Domink Bell

With biotechnology advancing at an astounding rate, last year’s innovations often become routine tools for today’s breakthroughs. For example, next generation sequencing (NGS) is now an integral step in CRISPR/Cas9 constructions. The...

By Dr Christian Oberdanner

As we saw in the previous article in this series, detecting differences in your cell-based fluorescence experiments means you need high assay sensitivity and reproducibility that comes from high quality optics and...

By Dr Christian Oberdanner

Ever wish you could turn your microplate reader into an imager, so you can see exactly what your cells are doing in the well? Conventional plate readers are a ‘black box’ for cell-based assays. Your plate goes into the...

By Dr Christian Oberdanner

If you thought automated cell imaging and confluence determinations were just for “high-content” microscopy, think again. “All-in-one” microplate readers are shifting into top gear with the addition of robust imaging...

By Dr Christian Oberdanner

Last night you were up until midnight tending to your live-cell experiment. This morning you woke up with great expectations, only to find that your cells are sick and the entire experiment must be repeated. Sound...

By Dr. Christian Oberdanner. 

Cell-based assays are a core research tool, offering an informative and cost-effective counterpart to in vitro and animal tests. Where destructive methods involving cell lysis once predominated, live cell assays are now...

By Dr Stefan Haberstock

Cell-based assays are giving us deeper insight into cellular mechanisms in a true biological context, and fluorescence assays are playing a leading role. Applications range from cytotoxicity, proliferation, apoptosis and...

By Siegfried Sasshofer

All researchers performing cellular assays – research or clinical - need a cell counting solution. Cell counters are used to count cells in a culture to determine density, concentration or viability. Having established the...

By Siegfried Sasshofer

Imagine life science research without cell-based assays. Or without cultured cells of all types to power those assays. Healthy, high-quality cells at the right point of confluence are vital for proliferation, kinetics,...

By Michael Fejtl

Successful assay development is of utmost importance for cost-efficient drug discovery. In vitro and cell-based assays serve as a first step to evaluate the biological effects of chemical compounds by cellular, molecular or...

By Kevin Moore

In the pharmaceutical industry, stem cells play a growing role in all phases of drug discovery, from disease modeling and early target discovery to their use in developing innovative cell therapies. Increasingly, a major development...

By Michael Fejtl

Cell-based and in vitro assays are cornerstones of successful drug discovery and development, informing critical decision points at every stage of the process, from target identification through to pre-clinical testing. Poor assay...

By Kevin Moore

The trend towards more automated workflows in research is helping to significantly improve data quality as well as laboratory productivity. But when it comes to choosing an automated system for liquid handling and dispensing, it can...

By Simon Fogarty

Designing an effective biological screen is always a case of knowing when to quit versus when to keep going, so you don’t miss potentially important factors. When working with complex biological systems, rational screen design...

By Simon Fogarty

A main presentation track at SLAS2018 entitled "Cellular Technologies" will include the session "Development of Cellular Models for Phenotypic Screening," chaired by Kristen Brennand, Ph.D., New York Stem Cell Foundation-Robertson...

By Simon Fogarty

In the rapidly evolving, data-driven life sciences sector, it is increasingly common to see labs developing their own in-house solutions to enable scale-up of novel methods, and to bridge technology gaps not yet filled by automation...

By Kevin Moore

From phenotypic assays to 4D cell tracking, high-tech methods are of increasing importance for complex screens. This expanding area will be a main presentation track at SLAS 2018 entitled "Assay Development and Screening" and...

By Simon Fogarty

High throughput screening methods for phenotypic drug discovery are in demand, as novel disease models arise and increase in complexity. A main presentation track at SLAS2018 entitled "Automation and High-throughput Technologies"...

By Kevin Moore

Phenotypic screening is back, with exciting implications for the discovery of new and more effective drugs. The reason? Constantly improving cellular technologies and instrumentation, and drug discovery and development programs...

By Kevin Moore

Like gravity, some phenomena are so integral to our existence that we’re barely conscious of them. Maybe that’s why the research community was largely taken by surprise when it was announced that this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology...

By Kevin Moore

The repeatability of biomedical research has become a major issue, and the ability to achieve reproducible research results can only be as good as the liquid handling performance. Automation has become a given step in the drive to...

By Nicholas Smith

Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence have the power to save us from drowning in the vast and growing sea of data needed for precision medicine, but what will it take to achieve a timely return on investment? Experts from...

By Kevin Moore

Data driven decision-making depends on generating reliable data in a timely fashion. But the reproducibility of biomedical research results, or rather lack of it, has become a big issue. A recent Nature survey¹ revealed a...

By Rick Luedke You may be convinced that your academic research laboratory is humming along just fine and cannot benefit from, take the time to consider, and perhaps most of all, afford adding automation to your workflow.

By Florence Collins

Scinomix, Inc., founded in 2001, creates customized solutions for labeling tubes, vials and plates in many life science applications. We took the chance to ask Nigel Malterer (CEO) and Jonathan King (Automation Software Engineer)...

By Dr Stefan Haberstock

As we have seen in the previous posts in this series, implementing fluorescence detection will be a quick and effective route to improving the quality and sensitivity of your assays. Achieving optimal fluorescence assays...

By Dr Stefan Haberstock

Fluorescence detection can give you the ability to develop assays with extreme sensitivity, high robustness and a broad dynamic range. Success involves addressing several challenges, such as the careful choice of excitation...

By Florence Collins

Barcodes play a central role in minimizing the risk of error in lab automation by providing secure tracking of components throughout the workflow. Barcode-guided lab automation can be simple and cost-effective, with significant...

By Severin Heynen

As we have learned in previous posts in this series, only pipette tips marked ‘sterile’ are guaranteed with a sterility assurance level (SAL) of 10^-6. Pipette tips labeled as ‘Pre-sterile’ do not give such sterility assurances.

By Dr Stefan Haberstock

Compared to many other detection technologies, fluorescence provides hard-to-beat performance and flexibility. Fluorescent labels are stable for months, deliver high sensitivity and the diversity in available dyes gives...

By Agnieszka Sitarska

The life science industry is constantly fighting to improve throughput and reduce costs through the ‘industrialization’ of research and development. You have to strike a balance between moving quickly (productivity) and...

By Kevin Moore

How can we improve upon the completely artificial situation that we have today for screening drugs? We spoke to Dr. Christopher Millan, Co-Founder and CTO of the up-and-coming company, CellSpring. Based in Zürich, Christopher Millan...

By Kevin Moore

With today's demands of throughput and flexibility, how can you perform screening better? We spoke to Dr. Bernhard Ellinger, Principal Scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology. Dr. Ellinger is...

By Severin Heynen

With multiple tests to perform on a tiny volume, samples are getting more precious. And as Next Generation Sequencing pushes the envelope on cost and throughput, scientists are looking for ways of reducing reagent volumes without...

By Severin Heynen

The industrialization of biology has become possible thanks to the automation of repetitive tasks such as liquid handling, providing several benefits. It allows customers to extend their window of operations, achieve greater assay...

By Severin Heynen

Maintaining control over sterility is critical to success in many academic and clinical research applications, including microbiological assays, biobanking, and handling cells.

By Nicholas Smith

How do cancer cells die? Necrosis of a tumor, or unscheduled cell death, has been linked to tumors outgrowing their blood supply. But now it is believed that the release of HMGB1 promotes the survival of the remaining tumor cells.

By Martin Braendle

Robotics and automation have become essential to the future plans of drug discovery and clinical diagnostic companies. Executives are looking to increase productivity and reduce costs, and automation fits the bill in every respect.

By Siegfried Sasshofer

The hemocytometer has been around for 140 years. It’s an easy, reliable, and trusty tool for all kinds of cell counting applications. It’s beautiful and simple. But measuring the well-being of your cells one click at a time is...

By Michael Fejtl

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.” Lord Kelvin knew that. To be confident in your results, to quickly move your studies forward, and to be the first to publish...

By Michael Fejtl

When it comes to drug development, the challenge is always to create as much in-vivo relevant data as possible. The more relevant in-vivo data you can gather, the lower the risk of the drug not passing a clinical trial.

By Siegfried Sasshofer

What are the benefits of the new Spark® 20M when it comes to accelerating the drug discovery process? This presentation from SLAS2016 goes beyond discussing typical microplate readers and washers to covering processes for...

By Hal Wehrenberg

What happens when the robots in your lab become self aware? Take a closer look at this issue and the possibilities by watching this presentation on self-aware automation from SLAS 2016.