The Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute (FLI), Federal Research Institute for Animal Health in Germany, has established an automated method to extract nucleic acids from bird samples to be tested for avian influenza using a Tecan Freedom EVO® 200 liquid handling workstation with the Macherey-Nagel Nucleospin Viral RNA kit.

"We needed an automated system that could achieve fast and reliable RNA extraction for the analysis of a large amount of samples," said Dr Markus Durban, postdoctoral research scientist responsible for establishing the robotic system at the FLI. "We were aiming for a fast but exact method with a maximum recovery of viral RNA, using our existing protocol provided by Macherey-Nagel. There is good compatibility between the Tecan workstation and the Macherey-Nagel kit so we quickly established a stable working protocol for RNA extraction and this set-up allows 96 samples to be extracted in parallel in one and a half hours."

Dr Bernd Hoffmann, senior scientist, explained: "We compared several automatic systems for the nucleic acid extraction and, based on these tests, we believe that the Tecan equipment is suitable for sensitive and robust extraction of nucleic acid with minimal cross-contamination".

About Tecan

Tecan (www.tecan.com) is a leading global player in the Life Sciences supply industry specializing in the development, production, and distribution of advanced automation solutions enabling pharma and academic research, diagnostics, food and veterinary research as well as forensics. Through its REMP subsidiary (www.remp.com), Tecan is the leading supplier of compound and sample storage, management and logistics solutions. Tecan clients are pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, university research departments and diagnostic laboratories. Founded in Switzerland in 1980, the company has manufacturing, research and development sites in both North America and Europe and maintains a sales and service network in 52 countries. In 2005, Tecan achieved sales of CHF 344.9 million (USD 275.9 Mio.; EUR 222.5 Mio.). Registered shares of Tecan Group are traded on the SWX Swiss Exchange (TK: TECN / Reuters: TECZn.S / Valor: 1210019).

For further information please contact:

About this application
Heribert Hess
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heribert.hess@tecan.com

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