Tecan uses cookies to improve our website. By continuing to browse our website, you accept our cookie policy.
Tecan uses cookies to improve our website. By continuing to browse our website, you accept our cookie policy.
Welcome to the Tecan blog. Here’s where we take a closer look at research and development stories, trends and developments shaping the diverse areas in which our customers and partners work.
The blog is written for anyone interested in laboratory automation, clinical diagnostics as well as developing their own automated lab systems. Updated regularly, you will find a wealth of information on the latest trends from the thought leaders.
So why not subscribe today to receive an email summary of our blog posts?
By Guido Cimoli
Progress from isolated systems to integrated solutions Many labs already use automation, but few experience its full potential.
By Claudio Bui
Healthcare is continuously advancing to deliver improved patient outcomes. First, because it must. Rising health threats—from global pandemics like COVID-19 to antibiotic-resistant infections and complex disorders—require the industry...
By Claudio Bui
Innovation in biotechnology often hinges on precision and customization—essential qualities that enable breakthroughs in fields like single-cell spatial genomics. For companies at the forefront of this research, having the right tools...
By Claudio Bui
Innovation in genomics doesn’t happen in isolation. Achieving breakthroughs requires appropriate tools like liquid handling systems that deliver precision, reliability, and speed—and, just as importantly, partnerships that enable...
By David Keller
As a healthcare instrument moves through its lifecycle, its engineering, development and customer support need to progress in parallel. In order to extend a product’s profitability for as long as possible and to maintain customer...
By David Keller
Developing an effective product lifecycle management (LCM) process is no longer just a ‘nice to have’ for manufacturers in the medical and diagnostics equipment industry, but an essential ‘must have’ to ensure long-term business...
By David Wold
Spatial biology, or spatial omics, allows the visualization and study of the interactions of individual molecules, tissues, and cells in three dimensions, over time.1-4 This can help us to better understand biological processes,...
By David Wold
Spatial biology, or spatial omics, is the ambitious term covering the science and technologies that allow researchers and clinicians to collect, explore, and analyze spatially resolved information on the interactions of individual...
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 Adrian Cortes Sanchon
Collaboration is the cornerstone of innovation. An ongoing collaboration between Tecan, manufacturer of robust, high-quality liquid handling automation systems, its partner, Macherey-Nagel, developer of nucleic acid...
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 Ashesh Saraiya
NGS has transformed genomics research and contributed to breakthroughs in many areas of medical science. At the same time, making NGS robust, reliable and cost-effective can be challenging for many labs. In particular, generating...
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 Nicholas Smith
You are considering an Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) partner to support you in bringing your idea to market. The planned in vitro diagnostic device may require components, robotics and modules. You may need integration...
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...
In true holiday spirit, isn't it time we spoke the truth about the toll next generation sequencing (NGS) is taking on your lab? Yes, NGS is a revolutionary technology that can help you break new ground in your research, but when...
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 Shang Tsai
Automation of protein sample preparation workflows to be able to address clinical questions has come of age: it is both possible and realistic, despite the hurdles outlined in our first article of this two-part series. Here, we discuss...
By Shang Tsai
Successful implementation of proteomics in the clinical environment has still not materialized, and lags far behind genomics, even after decades of advances in protein sample preparation. The primary cause for this underwhelming...
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 Roberta Veneroni
In the “new normal” post COVID-19, how can genomics labs be better prepared to respond quickly to the unexpected? How can they deliver reliable and insightful genetic sequencing results faster and more efficiently? What is the...
By David Wold
The global COVID-19 pandemic is putting unprecedented pressure on laboratories to meet demand for accurate, large-scale, high-throughput testing. In such extreme circumstances, conserving samples and minimizing risk of contamination is...
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 Claudio Bui
Getting to market quickly is essential when introducing new instrumentation into a fast-paced industry sector like genomics. When the pressure is on, rapid prototyping can be the key to quickly and efficiently building a reliable...
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 Markus Wiggli (in collaboration with Artel)
Imagine discovering that one of your company’s core liquid handling procedures has been generating variable results from one automation platform to the next, or one lab to the next. The impact could...
By Claudio Bui
Getting to market in time with a fully functional IVD instrument that is automated requires precision planning and laser focus at all stages of development. At the onset of your project, it is important to weigh the development risks...
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 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 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 Dr Manuel Bauer
As we saw in part 1 of this blog series, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is potentially the new gold standard for therapeutic monitoring of immunosuppressant drugs (ISD). However, for this technology to...
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
The In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) medical device market is fast-paced and highly competitive, with new and advanced applications appearing every day. High technical risks, cost overruns, schedule delays and missed end-user targets...
By Nicholas Smith
You have made the decision to enter into the development of an IVD medical device for your customers. You have learned that inviting an OEM partner into your project could be beneficial to reduce risks and fill expertise or skill...
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 Beatrice Marg-Haufe
One of the steps in DNA sample preparation that is often overlooked when moving from manual to automated methods, is the quantification and normalization of nucleic acid samples that are destined for downstream analysis in...
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 Beatrice Marg-Haufe
Written in collaboration with Zymo Research, Irvine, CA, USA.
Applications based on next-generation sequencing (NGS), and more recently third-generation sequencing, play a central and ever-growing role in disease research....
By Beatrice Marg-Haufe
Written in collaboration with Zymo Research, Irvine, CA, USA.
Next-generation sequencing (NGS*) has revolutionized genomic research, allowing entire genomes to be sequenced in a single day. This has led to massive advances in...
By Beatrice Marg-Haufe
Written in collaboration with Zymo Research, Irvine, CA, USA.
With the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS), the field of metagenomics has exploded in recent years, as scientists are now able to study microbes as...
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 Manuel Bauer
Advances in the treatment of disease, such as the many different types of cancer and cardiac diseases, mean that organ and bone marrow transplantation is on the rise.1 This rise has in turn generated an increased need for accurate...
By Claudio Bui
Lab automation and liquid handling solutions are evolving rapidly, shaped by many of the same forces and disruptive technologies that define the fourth industrial revolution. Alongside Industry 4.0, you could say that the era of...
By David Wold
Taste, touch, sight, hearing, smell…humans rely on five exquisitely powerful senses to negotiate even the most mundane tasks. Liquid handling robots don’t have that luxury; they are required to perform repetitive, high-precision tasks...
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 Petra Popp
Your diagnostics equipment business is growing in leaps and bounds. And no wonder—BCC Research reports that the global market for in vitro diagnostic (IVD) products is growing at a rate of 6.7% and should reach $102 billion by 2022.¹...
By Petra Popp
Customer service has become a crucial battleground for all types of industries, including life science, medical diagnostics and pharma. A study by NewVoiceMedia1 revealed that customer service plays a significant part in overall...
By Maria Liwanag
The syringe pump is the workhorse of any automated liquid handling instrument. A single syringe pump may complete one cycle every second, and as many as 4 million cycles in its lifetime. Keeping your pump syringes and components in...
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 David Wold
The impact of pump pressure sensors on your automated liquid handling pump performance is often underestimated and underappreciated. The saying, “You don't know what you’ve got ‘till it's gone” applies to many things in life –...
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
With high-throughput genomics impacting every corner of biology, the demand for more efficient Next-generation sequencing (NGS) workflows is growing rapidly. Automating the process of NGS sample preparation is crucial to avoid...
By Roberta Veneroni
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is driving dramatic progress in many fields of research. However, the value of NGS data is often limited by factors such as poor analysis pipelines and poor library quality. One way to improve the...
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 Enrique Neumann
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has generated a raft of new developments and discoveries. However, NGS is a complex process, and scientists face many technical difficulties throughout the workflow. NGS sample preparation, for...
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 Roberta Veneroni
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is helping to advance genomics research at an unprecedented rate. However, the process can be technically challenging, and any errors can significantly impact the reliability and accuracy of your...
By David Wold
From the perspective of a lab automation systems engineer, specifying the optimal liquid handling pump and associated fluidic components is often central to the design process, especially for products that will be used in a clinical...
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 Beatrice Marg-Haufe
Research and technology development focused on synthetic biology (synbio) and systems biology are expanding, as are its real-world applications. Even as more traditional synbio approaches, which involve engineering microbes to...
By Beatrice Marg-Haufe
The "first" genomics era began with the landmark Human Genome Project, which launched in 1990 and was completed in 2003, leading to the sequencing of the 20,000-25,000 human genes. It gave birth to an omics revolution and, by...
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 Siegfried Sasshofer
Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) is being increasingly recognized as having potential for the treatment of tumors, especially dermatological. But using conventional manual methods of recording the metabolic processes that occur as a...
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 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 Dr Manuel Bauer
Rohit Shroff provides insight from customer success stories on the benefits of automation in the clinical laboratory. Specifically, he answers the question “what can automation do for me” by illustration of the impact that these...
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 Claudio Bui
When you design a complex laboratory automation system or device, every OEM liquid handling component that you integrate into it should be reliable, dependable and expected to perform to the highest industry standards. Subpar quality...
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 Manuel Bauer
So you’ve made the investment in liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) in your clinical/diagnostics laboratory and now you need to get it up and running…adding value to the lab and generating a return. The job will...
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 Sirak Kifle
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology continues to advance at a high speed, and a growing range of new applications is constantly being developed. Microbiology and antibiotic susceptibility testing is one such application area...
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 Sirak Kilfe
With next-generation sequencing (NGS), the combined use of different instruments, workstations, manual approaches, and software can lead to unnecessary, time-consuming complications and errors, especially in high-throughput...
By Michelle Aichele
Are you ignoring valuable information about laboratory instrument and consumables usage because it is too difficult or time-consuming to collect and analyze? Is the information managed in too many disparate places and not easy to...
By Manuel Bauer
While MS has been around for over a century, the addition of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) in clinical testing laboratories has only become feasible in the last 15 to 20 years. Judith Stone, Senior CLS Specialist,...
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 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 Sirak Kifle
Clinical and public health microbiology laboratories reduce the burden of infectious diseases by detecting and characterizing pathogens in infected patients and communities. Next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis can improve...
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 Kevin Moore
When looking to maximize productivity in life science R&D, drug discovery, clinical studies or clinical diagnostics, laboratory automation is a crucial element. You may already have identified great solutions to automate individual...
By Markus Vogler
The last decade has seen dramatic changes in the world of diagnostics, with experts even referring to the present time as the start of the fourth industrial revolution. Digitalization, along with other technological advances such as...
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 Beatrice Marg-Haufe
Previously perceived perhaps as the exclusive domain of health-food fanatics and well-heeled consumers, organic foods are attracting wider interest and claiming more and more shelf-space in our supermarkets. However, what does...
By Martin Braendle
It is estimated that every six months the world’s laboratories generate more biological data than has ever before been created in human history. Even in non-scientific publications, we read about synthetic biology, gene editing,...
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 Markus Vogler
Similar to the highly competitive automobile industry, clinical laboratories and manufacturers servicing the clinical diagnostics and life science markets, are always under pressure to increase quality and reliability. Likewise,...
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 Markus Vogler
The world of diagnostics, like so many other industries, is entering what leaders in the World Economic Forum are calling the fourth industrial revolution. Digitalization, robotization and automation have given rise to highly...
By Jason Meredith
Hot on the heels of a hugely successful SLAS2018 conference in San Diego last February, Tecan teamed up with Titian Software at the end of June to hold an equally popular SLAS2018 workshop in Brussels. The focus this time was on...
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 Enrique Neumann
Previously, we looked at what differentiates a competent genomics scientist from a ”rock star”, and learned that the true geniuses are both fast and productive, but nevertheless always focus on quality. Similar to a conventional...
By Hal Wehrenberg
Cost-efficient application of advanced technologies such as next generation sequencing (NGS) and liquid-chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC-MS) demands sophisticated automation solutions that can handle complex protocols and...
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 Simon Fogarty
The challenge of drug discovery and development is putting increasing pressure on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to boost productivity through targeted and strategic improvements in the drug discovery workflow. Automation...
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 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 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 Enrique Neumann
It’s an exciting time to be working in genomics. The explosion of sequence data and library preparation methods along with big advances in areas like gene editing and bioinformatics, is paving the way for breakthroughs that seem...
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...
(Part 2 of 2). The effect of one's lifestyle on the epigenetic steerage of future generations, reviewed in Part I of this series, is a sobering thought. But these insights in epigenetic-based gene regulation are also opening up new...
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 Simon Fogarty
The growing productivity crisis in drug discovery and development is forcing pharmaceutical companies large and small around the globe to rethink their research and development (R&D) strategies. As investors look to small and...
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 Kevin Moore
Always a great forum for networking and sharing information on the latest developments and trends in laboratory automation, SLAS didn’t disappoint this year. The biggest buzz in 2018 focused on the increasingly important role that...
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...
We are constantly bombarded with advice on what to eat and drink, and how to exercise. Pregnant women are particularly in the spotlight, being told to avoid exposing their developing fetus to alcohol, tobacco, chemical pollutants, and...
By Claudio Bui
When introducing a new product to the automated liquid handling market, getting there first with high quality and reliable hardware is vital to capturing and maintaining early market leadership. How can you gain that advantage when...
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 Alexandra Sommer
Rapid advances in molecular diagnostics, including the application of advanced methods such as next generation sequencing (NGS) in clinical diagnostics, are revolutionizing healthcare. But this puts a lot of pressure on clinical...
By Jason Meredith
No matter how much you invest in a liquid handling automation system, it’s next to worthless without well-designed software. The hardware and robotics are certainly critical, but it is the software that can make a big difference in...
By Siegfried Sasshofer
An automated liquid handler for sample processing can significantly increase your productivity. It becomes even more powerful when integrated with other workflow components to enable you to create fully automated walkaway...
By Ralf Masantschek
Automated pipetting is among the most effective ways to minimize human error, increase precision and accuracy, and speed up a lab workflow. However, deciding what the ‘must have’ components are that you need for successful...
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 Kevin Moore
Next generation sequencing (NGS) and the related applications for cell-based assay development are poised to be a powerful combination in the field of genomics. SLAS 2018 dives into this topic in the track "Assay development and...
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 Kevin Moore
Biomarker discovery and development depends critically upon the accessibility and quality of biospecimens. Higher throughput and more integrated approaches for biospecimen management and biobanking are becoming increasingly important...
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 Agnieszka Sitarska
Choosing a method and developing a protocol for small molecule LC-MSMS sample preparation can be a complex process. An effective shortcut is to use an extraction plate built for automation. With fewer processing steps and an...
By Kevin Moore
Automated liquid handling can eliminate many tedious tasks, improve your productivity and free up valuable time for better things…but only if you implement the right solutions. Whether you are working in genomics, cell biology, drug...
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 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 Claudio Bui
When designing products that include automated liquid handling, how do you decide when and what to buy from an OEM components supplier vs. designing in-house? How do you then decide who will be the right partner for you? A...
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 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 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 Enrique Neumann
Gene editing is crucial to pharmaceutical development. CRISPR-Cas9 promises to revolutionize the role gene editing plays in drug discovery and even therapeutics.
By Simon Fogarty
At Tecan, we’ve been solving lab automation problems for over thirty years. In planning for SLAS, I was asked an interesting question: what are the main automation challenges that people face in drug discovery and screening? I can...
By Agnieszka Sitarska
In the previous article in this series it became clear that high productivity in small molecule LC-MSMS relies on effective sample prep that supports reproducible results and minimizes downtime for sensitive LC and MS...
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 Agnieszka Sitarska
Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MSMS) adds a lot of analytical power when you need to quantify small molecules in body fluids, but a simple approach of ‘dilute and shoot’ is not going to be enough to ensure...
By Claudio Bui
Everyone knows if you work harder and faster you’ll get done sooner, but then many are left wondering why they didn’t get to market first. It may seem simple, but when it comes to life science laboratory automation it’s not as easy as...
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 Domink Bell
Quality sample preparation is fundamental to the analytical process. No wonder it can take up to 60% of a laboratory technician’s time. Today’s robotic systems are turbo charging this process – especially when it comes to detecting...
By Nicholas Smith
Human genetics and drug discovery are now inextricably linked. Large pharmaceutical companies, small biotech and even academic laboratories are sequencing data to identify potential targets for new therapies. But is this...
By Nicholas Smith
Scientists around the world have made great strides in genetic testing. But when it comes to realizing the benefits across a wide range of medical specialties access to information is key.
By Dr Manuel Bauer
Why would you want to miniaturize your PCR experiments if they are working well as they are? Because manual PCR setup is tedious and hand pipetting is error-prone. Miniaturization allows for automation, minimizing the labor- and...
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 Manuel Bauer
Robert Tanguary runs a zebrafish facility and use zebrafish as a high throughput in vivo model system to identify bioactive molecules. Essentially, they do rapid systems toxicology using zebrafish models to study the adverse effects...
By Severin Heynen
Successful scientific projects build on accurate results from analytical methods that you have confidence in. In regulated situations, they must be backed up by routines and documentation that follow regulatory standards that...
By Isabel Patocchi
In the US and EU, there are over 200 approved biotherapeutic drugs already on the market. The rush to evaluate the hundreds of candidates in the pipeline has created a demand for increasingly efficient high throughput technologies...
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 Bronwen Forster
What does the boss want to achieve by automating a process? The priority is enhanced data quality, followed closely by greater productivity, protecting your investment, and saving time and money. Tecan's Fluent® 780 can meet these...
By Dr Christian Oberdanner
Achieving reproducibility in a cell-based fluorescence assay can be a real challenge. For example, you might run a very basic experiment to determine the optimal concentration of cell media supplements for your primary...
By Jana Langhoff
Manual colony picking is a highly labor-intensive task that is slow, tedious, and error-prone. Cost-effective automation makes the process more consistent and reliable, as well as considerably faster, enabling hundreds of colonies...
SLAS2017 Presentation by Joy Rae-Radecki Crandall, Ambry Genetics
Ambry Genetics operates a CLIA-licensed genetics testing laboratory that processes clinical samples primarily using next-generation sequencing (NGS), followed by Sanger sequencing to...
SLAS2017 Presentation by Chris Millan, CTO, CellSpring
CellSpring’s 3D Bloom® biopolymer platform is based on an engineered extracellular matrix that supports the growth of cells in a 3D culture environment in the laboratory.Most cell types,...
SLAS2017 Presentation by Dr. Bernhard Ellinger, Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, IME, Hamburg, Germany
Fraunhofer IME has had very good success using the Tecan Fluent® to perform fully automated screening of smaller...
SLAS2017 Presentation by Siegfried Sasshofer, Product Manager, Tecan
The ability to reduce data variability can help greatly increase your confidence in your results. Statistically significant experimental results may not actually be achieved if you...
By Nicholas Smith
If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) goes forward with its proposed guidance to regulate laboratory developed tests (LDTs) in the same way it does manufacturer-derived tests, then much is going to change for clinical...
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 Nicholas Smith
The intention by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a new guidance that would bring oversight of laboratory developed tests (LDTs) directly under FDA regulatory control, instead of the current paradigm in which...
By Nicholas Smith
Uncertainty and concern best describe the prevailing feelings of many researchers, clinicians, and companies that develop, manufacture, and implement laboratory developed tests (LDTs). The reason for all this uncertainty is the...
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 Agnieszka Sitarska
Whatever you are using automated liquid handling for, be it drug development, next generation sequencing, assay development or basic research with cell-based assays, getting correct results is crucial to reaching your goals,...
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 Severin Heynen
If you need to absolutely guarantee that the tips you are using are sterile when they arrive on your lab bench then there are a few critical points to consider.
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 Jon Smith
If you’ve decided to take advantage of next generation sequencing (NGS) for HLA typing, your timing couldn’t be better. With the recent introduction of more affordable bench-top sequencers and targeted HLA sequencing panels, NGS is more...
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 Jon Smith
For patients in need of vital transplants, fast and accurate tissue typing can mean earlier treatment and a better chance of survival. Next generation sequencing (NGS) is revolutionizing human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing by providing...
By Kevin Trümpi
Today’s automated microbiological lab uses matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) for quick, effective and cost saving identification.
By Nicholas Smith
Jeff Bishop, Vice President, Research & Development, Singulex, explains the proprietary single molecule counting (SMC™) technology which has become today’s gold standard for immunoassay technology.
By Jon Smith
They don’t take up much room in your DNA – a mere 4 megabases on the short arm of Chromosome 6 – but Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) genes play a defining role in whether you will develop an autoimmune disorder, fend off an infectious...
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 Kevin Moore
Dana Campbell, Field Support Specialist, Artel, considers the importance of quality control (QC) from an applications perspective.
By Rohit Shroff
Stone, Senior CLS Specialist, UCSD, presents the benefits of testing for testosterone using LC-MS versus immunoassays, particularly in the case of female and pediatric patients.
By Agnieszka Sitarska
The mass spec immunoassay (MSIA) workflow was developed to provide a simple, automated process for purification of targeted analytes for downstream detection using multiple analytical techniques, such as mass spectrometry.
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 Vince Ahlheit
Vince Ahlheit, Senior Application Scientist, Tecan, provides insight on the benefits of automation in the clinical laboratory.
By Rohit Shroff
Anthony Nuccio, Chief Operating Officer, ADO Health Services introduces their sample preparation process, which begins at the point of collection.
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 Beatrice Marg-Haufe
It is becoming increasingly clear that at least some medical conditions previously ascribed only to genetic and biochemical changes in the brain, including neurodegenerative diseases and psychiatric disorders, are linked to...
By Beatrice Marg-Haufe
Urban planning, urban warfare, urban decay..., and next up, urban metagenomics. If you had any doubt that we are living in the genomics era, consider this: On June 21st 2016, the International MetaSUB Consortium began...
By Enrique Neumann
The term genomics might at first lead you to think of the human genome and the new micro-industry subsectors it has spawned, from prenatal genetic screening for heritable diseases (and one day perhaps to select for "desirable"...
By Nicholas Smith
Today there is much discussion on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation and oversight of Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs). The debate features numerous topics including the necessity for regulation, whether the FDA has...
By Kevin Moore
In this video presentation from SLAS 2016, Joe Zer, an Associate Scientist at Dart NeuroScience, working in a CMG lab that handles over 1000 compounds a week from different sources, explains in detail why his company started using...
By Kevin Moore
With years of experience in lab automation, Wolfgang Jörg at Boehringer Ingelheim needed to find a new automation solution for a colleague working with compound management. Presenting at SLAS 2016, Wolfgang said, “We decided to test...
by Simon Fogarty
Now that phenotypic screening is well and truly back, how do you take advantage of its many benefits, especially if you’ve already made a considerable commitment to target-based screening? The simple answer is: you combine the two.
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 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 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.
By Achim von Leoprechting
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is poised to become a decisive tool in diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic applications in oncology. In the first part of this two-part series, we saw that sequencing tumor-derived DNA...
By Achim von Leoprechting
Massively parallel sequencing has rapidly become a must-have tool of the trade in molecular biology and drug discovery research. In recent years, the cost of next-generation sequencing (NGS) has declined exponentially,...
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...
By Simon Fogarty
(Part 3 of 3: Read Part 2) In the first part of this series, we introduced you to imatinib (Gleevec). This drug was originally launched in 2001 as a potent treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). It also proved to be effective...
By Simon Fogarty
(Part 2 of 3: Read part 1) 'The so-called ‘War against Cancer’ started with US President Richard Nixon’s National Cancer Act of 1971. It turned out to be many battles on many fronts as cancer was confirmed to be not one but a...
By Simon Fogarty
In 1996, Dr. Charles Sawyers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA, became involved in the initial testing of a drug for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The drug, imatinib (later to be launched as Gleevec),...