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By David Wold
Understanding the spatial context of the changes that occur in molecular and cellular interactions during disease is critical for the development of effective diagnostics and novel therapies. Spatial biology, or spatial omics, is the...
By Oliver Schmidt
The measurement of soluble interleukin-2 receptor (sIL-2R) levels in serum or plasma has become an important tool to evaluate immune activation in adults.1 Elevated...
By Mellisa Enriquez
Tecan's design engineering plays a crucial role in driving the automation of molecular diagnostics workflows. The Tecan® ADP pipettor range has a proven track record of successful integration into...
By Nick Smith
The launch of your new in vitro diagnostics (IVD) system is imminent. You’ve read in our first article about the 5 major ingredients for success: retaining technical expertise, investing in training, ensuring regional focus,...
By Mellisa Enriquez
Molecular diagnostics offers researchers and clinicians valuable insights into the mechanisms of disease, allowing them to assess predisposition, as well as to design and...
By Nick Smith
The development phase of your new automated system is coming to an end. You’ve fine-tuned your IVD instrument with the help of your Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) partner, tested it thoroughly with...
By Oliver Schmidt
The quantification of soluble interleukin-2 receptor (sIL-2R) in serum or plasma in adults has become an extremely useful tool for clinicians to assess immune function in vivo, as...
By Constanze Drechsel
Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disease affecting 14-20/100,000 people in the U.S.1 and 1-9/100,000 people in Europe.2 The sad truth is that most of those afflicted go undiagnosed. Myasthenia gravis causes severe muscle...
By Magali Wolff
You could say that the road to in vitro diagnostic medical devices regulation (IVDR) implementation has been rocky. We have read all of the documents, spent hours in meetings and felt our heart stop with every new announcement about...
By Joe Guterl
Bring the test to the patient, not the patient to the test. When diagnostic test instruments are available at the point of care (POC), healthcare providers and patients will have faster and easier access to reliable results. Risks can...
By Joe Guterl
More than $72 billion – that is what some researchers estimate will be the global point-of-care (POC) biochemical diagnostic testing market size in 2027, up from $36 billion in 2021.1,2 The POC molecular diagnostics market is expected...
By Hannah van Schijndel (Artemis) and Dajana Domik (Tecan)
It is estimated that up to 20% of the world’s population may have some degree of food intolerance, which can manifest itself in pathologies such as celiac disease, dermatitis, atopic eczema,...
By Dajana Domik
Neopterin is a valuable diagnostic biomarker which can be applied in research and in clinical settings. As an inflammation marker, it is a global “catch all” biomarker that serves as an early warning system for many different...
By Günter Weisshaar
The announcement of the In Vitro Diagnostics Regulation (IVDR) in 2017 was celebrated as an essential upgrade to in vitro diagnostic (IVD) device regulations in Europe. This article discusses the important changes, challenges,...
By Dajana Domik
Neopterin is a broad range inflammation marker which can be measured in the blood of patients and indicates a multitude of diseases from acute viral infections to autoimmune conditions.1 This marker can serve as an essential “catch...
By Dajana Domik
When patients exhibit symptoms common to more than one disease or invading pathogen it is useful to have a universal biomarker that can help you narrow down the potential causes, monitor progress of an ongoing condition, and give you...
By Nastya Yeska
IgG and IgG4-based ELISA testing is often recommended to reduce the guesswork in identifying food sensitivities in IBS, IBD and related pathologies, and is the most widely used immunological method.[i]1-4 However, many commercial...
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 Laura Nea
The global trend toward more stringent regulatory control of in vitro diagnostic (IVD) medical devices is sending shock waves through the industry. Now that we have passed the halfway mark in the transition to Europe’s new In Vitro...
By Laura Nea
Is your business IVDR-ready, or are there treacherous gaps in your strategy? This November marks the halfway point in the five-year transition to the In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR) 2017/746—a major regulatory overhaul that calls...
By Andreas Schmitt
When you have a diagnostic lab instrument and want to make the move to automation, creating high-quality, reliable and intuitive robot control software that, optimizes throughput, provides process safeguards, and analyzes and...
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 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 Claudio Bui
With complex products like laboratory instruments used to automate genomic testing, time to market is often a critical factor in determining whether or not to go ahead with product development. The obvious problem is that as projects...
By Nastya Yeska
The accurate measurement of female hormone levels is at the very core of women’s reproductive health and general wellbeing, whether searching for potential causes of infertility, or treating debilitating premenstrual or menopausal...
By Dr Beatrice Marg-Haufe
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced everyone to look at laboratory routines to see if they are really pandemic proof. For example, the explosive demand for high throughput genomic analysis often creates pressures upstream to...
By David Wold
Designing and manufacturing lab instruments that include automated liquid handling is challenging at the best of times, but in the face of increased demand for faster testing, it’s even more critical to select the right partner and...
By Nastya Yeska
Saliva-based tests are a reliable and proven method for measuring female hormone levels, as well as being highly accurate and painless for the patient.¹ This article takes you through five key steps to consider when setting up...
By Joe Rotter
How do you prepare for the unexpected? The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light how challenging it is for labs and production facilities to scale up quickly in times of need. The sudden surge in demand for laboratory solutions at the...
By Magali Fischer
Steroid analysis using a saliva sample first appeared in the scientific literature more than 40 years ago.1 Now, as then, saliva sampling presents an attractive alternative to blood testing because it is non-invasive, easily...
By Yves Wurmitzer
From top global instrument makers to smaller startups, life science companies face a challenge when developing and launching new IVD products in a fast-paced market. How do you create a product that meets market needs without...
By Nastya Yeska
Female hormone levels have been measured using blood tests for decades.1 However, blood sampling is costly, invasive, and often logistically difficult, so there is a shift towards the adoption of tests based on more convenient and...
By Nastya Yeska
There is a definite role for IgG4 testing when diagnosing and treating pathologies that are associated with elevated levels of specific IgGs, such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel syndrome.¹,² This is...
By Nastya Yeska
Women are affected by the ever-changing levels of their female sex hormones throughout all stages of their lives. These fluctuations may be normal or abnormal and may affect the development of a young woman’s secondary sexual...
By Nastya Yeska
Food intolerance or sensitivity to many common foods, such as gluten, dairy or other products, appears to be on the increase. This begs the question: does food intolerance really exist, or is it simply a trendy fad in today’s...
By Nicholas Smith
If you’re thinking about automating your in vitro diagnostic (IVD) product it can be hard to decide whether to outsource to an Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) partner or keep the development in-house. While the familiarity...
By Andreas Scheidegger
Introducing a new in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) lab automation solution can add an entirely new dimension to your existing product portfolio and business. Launching a complete system that provides harmony between chemistry and...
By Magali Fischer
Generating reproducible, accurate ELISA data starts with reliable reagents that are highly sensitive and specific. These are often available as kits that need to be incorporated into an...
By Magali Fischer
With more than 50% of preclinical results estimated to be irreproducible, the reliability of methods, assays, and protocols is a major concern in all areas of research. Many critical assay workflows, such as those for ELISA tests,...
By Nicholas Smith
It can be easy to dismiss outsourcing lab automation in favour of seemingly less expensive do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions. However, outsourcing is more cost effective than it might seem. By taking advantage of the expertise of...
By Nicholas Smith
With open source software and high quality off-the-shelf components, do-it-yourself (DIY) lab automation solutions are trending. While developing lab automation in-house might seem attractive at first glance, the road is littered...
By Micaela Wochner
As a diagnostic product moves through its lifecycle, its development, engineering and customer support needs change. In order to extend the period of product profitability and customer loyalty for as long as possible, you must...
By Micaela Wochner
For product manufacturers in the medical and diagnostics equipment industry, developing an effective product lifecycle management process is no longer a “nice to have” but a “must have”. From managing the cost of product...
By Claudio Bui and Yves Wurmitzer
Innovating, developing and bringing a new automated liquid handling product to market quickly, before requirements and needs change, is no easy feat. A software development kit (SDK) supporting your platform and...
By Claudio Bui
Analytical instrumentation is evolving so fast that engineers run the risk of their robotic platforms becoming obsolete before the development cycle can be completed. The competitive life science instrumentation market is expanding at...
By Anne Hartenhauer
More than 90% of patients with signs and symptoms of myasthenia gravis can be readily detected and treated with a range of effective therapies. The key to early diagnosis and treatment that can lead to remission is the selection...
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 Anne Hartenhauer
“Myasthenia gravis is eminently treatable,” say researchers at UCL’s Institute of Neurology1. Yet clinicians still find it challenging to detect and manage. In a new webinar entitled “Autoantibodies in Myasthenia Gravis,” Dr. Jan...
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 Anne Hartenhauer
Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disease with an estimated prevalence of 14-20/100,000 population in the U.S.1 and 1-9 /100,000 population in Europe.2 Many affected individuals go undiagnosed. Myasthenia gravis can cause severe...
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 Yves Wurmitzer
Anatomical pathology labs face ever-increasing pressure to meet demands for enhanced throughput, improved quality and cost savings. Additionally as we saw in the previous article in this series, anatomical pathology has to adapt to...
How to overcome challenges like inefficient workflow and a lack of suitably trained staff is the question increasingly facing laboratories in markets ranging from diagnostics to food and beverages. Could sample-to-answer systems be...
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 Yves Wurmitzer
The anatomical pathology – or histopathology – workflow has not changed in decades, yet volumes increase and laboratories expand. A serious shortage of qualified personnel is making matters even worse. Added to that, errors...
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
HMGB1 is a key mediator in the immune response and increased levels can be important indicators of disease. In this, the last in our series on HMGB1, we will look at the performance of the IBL HMGB1 ELISA Kit, which has been used...
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 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 Yves Wurmitzer
The anatomical pathology – or histopathology – services sector is projected to grow, but histopathology labs the world over are struggling in the face of shortages in trained pathologists, increasing regulatory pressure, changing...
By Nicholas Smith
We may well be on the threshold of a new hope for oncology. Shorthanded to ctDNA, circulating cell free tumor DNA is sloughed off from tumors. It can be detected in liquid biopsies of just a few milliliters of blood. This could...
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 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 Nicholas Smith
As sequencing grows significantly in China, how are Chinese home-grown companies making the most of it?
In December 2017, the UK and China announced a joint initiative to advance collaboration in science and innovation¹. The...
By Dr. Katrin Flatscher
Budget constraints and short-term funding are a fact of life for most research labs. The problem can be particularly acute if you are working with living cells, which presents complex technical challenges. Working with...
By Katrin Flatscher
Butterfly disease has been called “the worst disease you’ve never heard of”. It’s an excruciatingly painful genetic condition that makes life miserable for the affected, and currently, there’s no cure. To make matters even worse,...
By Katrin Flatscher
Funding for the study of rare diseases and medical conditions (sometimes called orphan diseases) is often limited and short-term, which can put off both basic research and pharma investment. Yet there are numerous reasons why...
By Enrique Neumann
Much of the work done in a genomics lab is repetitive, labor-intensive, and just plain boring. Is this really the best use of highly skilled scientists? How do you keep staff motivation up when another couple hundred samples roll...
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 Alexandra Sommer
Cardiovascular diseases claim more lives than all forms of cancer combined, accounting for 17.3 million deaths per year. Heart attacks are a primary symptom. The longer it takes to diagnose and treat a heart attack, the greater...
By Dr. Enrique Neumann
They say that the era of the $100 genome is upon us, but is that true for you? While cost analyses of DNA sequencing indicate that this landmark is finally within reach, the reality is that most NGS labs are still spending far...
By Christian Scherling
The evolution of metabolomics from research to applied science has not been as rapid or dynamic as genomics or proteomics. However, the promise of metabolomics as a diagnostic strategy is becoming much clearer.
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 Alexandra Sommer
The race to find a way of spotting and treating Alzheimers at an early stage is heating up but there’s a long way still to go. Or is there?
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 Domink Bell
The presence of excess cortisol hormone in saliva can be an indication of a number of serious biochemical imbalances that include chronic stress, adrenal fatigue, obesity, diabetes and conditions like Cushing Syndrome. Increasingly,...
By Rohit Schroff
The popularity of mass spectrometry based testing is growing all the time. As a result, businesses in the diagnostics industry offering mass-spectrometry-based clinical assays, especially analytical laboratories in toxicology...
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 Alexandra Sommer
The drive to make healthcare more targeted and more personalized has accelerated the application of increasingly sophisticated technologies, such as next generation sequencing (NGS). The result has been the introduction of some...
By Jason Meredith
In an increasingly regulated industry, clinical laboratories and manufacturers of in vitro diagnostic (IVD) tests are feeling the pressure to ensure regulatory compliance, while at the same time striving to increase productivity...
By Jason Meredith
Hospitals are becoming the new centers of innovation for novel clinical diagnostic tests. While this is enabling more sophisticated and personalized approaches to disease prevention, early diagnosis, and targeted treatment, it also...
By Severin Heynen
As we have seen in the previous posts in this series, developing validated analytical methods becomes more cost- and time-effective when solutions with guaranteed compatibility are incorporated into the analytical system.
By Florence Collins
A long-term clinical lab study lasting over 10 years showed that more than 60% of all mistakes in the stat lab (the lab that receives high priority samples) can be attributed to the pre-analytical phase. This figure has not...
By Severin Heynen
Well-documented reliable, accurate data that meets regulatory demands is crucial for success The key is to develop robust analytical methods based on instruments and other components that perform well together to ease the way...
By Christian Scherling
As the numbers of addicts and drug-related deaths continue to soar in the US and in Europe, forensic and diagnostic labs are looking for efficient methods to discriminate drugs of abuse that provide an easy workflow and are...
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 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
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 Claudio Bui
When developing a liquid handling instrument, it is important to be first to market for early market leadership. Dr. Claudio Bui, Head of Product Concepts, Tecan, considers key elements to completing a project quickly and efficiently,...
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 Nicholas Smith
Steve Pemberton, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, reflects on applications across multiple market opportunities including IVD, food & beverage and highly complex CLIA laboratories and the resulting value proposition of Rheonix.
By Magali Fischer
A symptomatic menopausal woman may require periodic testing of her estrogen and progesterone levels to make necessary adjustments in the dosing of hormone replacement therapy. An athlete undergoes steroid hormone testing leading up...
By Magali Wolff
Diagnostic testing has a long, bloody (i.e., blood-based) history, and when a physician orders a test, the usual response is to strap on a tourniquet, pull out a syringe, and extract a venous blood sample. For some tests, though,...
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 Dr. Manuel Bauer
As Product Manager for Liquid Handling and Robotics at Tecan, I had the opportunity to introduce the power of the Tecan D300e Digital Dispenser at SLAS2016. You can view the presentation here. Without giving too much away, all...
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.
By Martin Braendle
(Part 2 of 2. Read Part I). In 1948, Bill Koster of the Variety Club of New England and Dr. Sidney Farber working at the Children’s Hospital Boston had launched The Children's Cancer Research Fund, aimed at supporting a hospital...
In his book, The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee tells the story of one of the turning points in the history of cancer medicine. A turning point that he dates to May 1947. In this two-part article we will look at how...