Selected category: Freedom EVO

The prevalence of eye diseases is rising around the world and, for most of them, there are no effective therapies available. Disorders that impair vision – such as macular degeneration or glaucoma – are a leading cause of disability and loss of an...

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men, killing hundreds of thousands each year. However, the current routine screening method for checking prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels generates false positives in an alarming number of...

Several outbreaks of the Zika virus have been reported around the world since its discovery in 1947, but a commercially available treatment for the disease is still not available, and scientists continue to search for the best antiviral agent....

Opioid addiction, alongside addiction to other substances, is a significant public health, social and economic challenge in the US. In 2017, the opioid epidemic was declared a public health emergency by the Department of Health and Human Services,...

The COVID-19 pandemic is an important reminder that pathogens are not only transmitted via air and contact with other humans, but also from animals and through food. This highlights the need for effective diagnostic tools that offer fast testing of...

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing issue preventing the effective treatment of numerous parasitic diseases in both humans and animals. The lack of effective antimicrobials for the treatment of a growing number of diseases represents a serious...

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of biosurveillance to understand, control and limit the spread of human diseases. In response to the pandemic, the laboratories at PTP Science Park in Lodi, Italy, quickly enhanced their set-up,...

Bacterial endotoxin testing (BET) is an important quality control check for the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries, ensuring that injectable or intravenous drugs and implantable medical devices are safe to use. Lonza offers a wide range of...

Metagenomics is rapidly emerging as a promising method for disease diagnosis, but the need for manual processing is delaying turnaround times and limiting clinical uptake. Dr John Rossen, Head of Global Research & Development and Product Strategy...

Laboratory automation is increasingly common in life sciences research, helping to tackle some of the challenges that come with manual workflows, including inefficient operation, limited throughput and challenges of reproducibility. However, most...

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 upstream pressures to process many more samples...

Precision medicine is potentially revolutionizing diagnostics and treatment by targeting mutations that are specific to individual patients with various diseases, including cancer. The Institute of Pathology and Neuropathology at the Essen...

It has been estimated that, by 2050, the world will need to produce 70% more food than in 2005, and will need 50% more fresh water and fuel, while reducing CO₂ emissions by 100%. These are massive global challenges that are not going to be solved by...

SARS-CoV-2 has hit the world by storm and testing has had a major part to play in the fight against the virus, helping to track cases and slow rates of infection. ABC Labs, based at the Karolinska campus in Stockholm, was founded soon after the...

UK Biocentre has been central to the UK Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, repurposing its entire facility to become a national center for SARS-CoV-2 molecular testing. To help meet an ambitious target of 100,000 tests per day across...

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) have an integral role in the development of various diseases, and are therefore a key focus for many researchers investigating novel drug targets or attempting to understand more about human health. Scientists at...

The emergence and outbreak of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 at the end of 2019 has created an urgent need for testing to help limit the spread of COVID-19. AusDiagnostics has used its patented, multiplexed-tandem PCR technology to develop a test...

Gaining an accurate diagnosis of HIV is essential to ensure that patients get the right treatment, and that the disease is contained as much as possible. In Kenya, where HIV is prevalent, the quality of testing across the country is being monitored...

The COVID-19 pandemic has required an unprecedented level of collaboration within the scientific community, as labs around the world aim to characterize and understand the SARS-CoV-2 virus in order to develop and implement new diagnostic tests,...

The ever-increasing throughput and ever-decreasing cost of next generation sequencing have made this technology a practical and affordable solution for everything from molecular diagnostics and antimicrobial susceptibility testing to crop research...

Probiotics play an important role in animal nutrition, ensuring a healthy balance of gut microbiota to improve performance or productivity. Scientists at Christian Hansen are using high throughput liquid handling systems to fully automate sample...

DNA isolation and PCR set-up can be laborious and time consuming when performed manually. Dutch pathology and microbiology services provider PAMM has overcome this issue by automating its molecular testing protocols for sexually transmitted...

Drug discovery is a lengthy and expensive process, particularly in the early candidate identification stages, where screening of large numbers of compounds is required. Researchers at the University of Central Florida are using artificial...

Liquid biopsies offer the potential for the minimally-invasive detection of a growing number of cancers. Epigenomics is using its expertise in epigenetics to develop rapid tests for blood-borne cancer biomarkers, based on the unique DNA methylation...

Understanding how and when laboratory automation assets are being used is crucial to maximize productivity and enable effective resource planning in high throughput facilities. California’s Ambry Genetics has a portfolio of almost 60 Fluent® and...

Rapid advances in genomic and molecular diagnostic techniques have seen these technologies make a rapid transition from the research bench to the clinic. As with any test used for diagnostic applications, ease of use and reproducible, reliable...

Improving sustainability in the materials industry is vital to help address some of the biggest issues faced by today’s world, including climate change and the use of toxic chemicals. Checkerspot, a start-up materials company, is using biotechnology...

Genetic testing is at the forefront of modern medicine, and powerful tools are now available to identify inherited DNA characteristics that are potentially detrimental to health or conversely show susceptibility to targeted therapies. One such...

The initial screening of chromatographic conditions can be a major bottleneck in the development of protein purification protocols. Italian company BiCT – Biological and Chemical Technologies – has turned to automation to overcome this issue,...

Genetic testing to screen for congenital defects is useful to identify susceptibility to, or the cause of, many diseases. The medical genetics department at the Policlinico di Milano – a teaching hospital in Italy’s Lombardy region – is using...

High sensitivity immunoassays allow earlier detection and diagnosis of patient conditions, leading to earlier interventions and better patient prognoses. Immunodiagnostics company Singulex’s unique immunoassay technology allows early detection of...

Automation is helping the University Hospital Münster to streamline its molecular diagnostics workflows, increasing throughput for Sanger sequencing and NGS library preparation.

Biopharmaceutical production is a complex process compared to small molecule drug manufacture, requiring the interaction of multiple biosynthesis pathways to create the target product. KBI Biopharma is using high throughput bioanalysis to gain an...

Personalized medicine is on the horizon, and cell membrane lipidomics may hold the key. Italian biotechnology company Lipinutragen is studying the relationship between the membrane status and dietary and health conditions. A crucial part of the...

Automation offers many benefits for bioprocess development involving multiple microbial strains, yet few off-the-shelf platforms are capable of combining liquid handling tasks with microscale cultivation. The Microbial Bioprocess Lab at...

Continuous advances in medical understanding are leading to rapid growth in the demand for diagnostic testing, making automation essential for laboratories trying to address this increase in their workloads. Many providers are also centralizing and...

Virology testing at a molecular level is crucial for a fast and sensitive initial diagnosis, but its role doesn’t stop there. Clinicians frequently request retrospective analysis, sometimes as a means of monitoring drug response or identifying drug...

Biomanufacturing requires careful separation of the molecule of interest from other cellular products to ensure the quality and stability of the final product. This is even more important for the manufacture of biotherapeutics, as the presence of...

Tecan has further extended the flexibility of the Freedom EVO Liquid Handling (LiHa) Arm with the launch of a 5 ml disposable tip. Previously only available to Tecan customers working with fixed tips, the unrivalled pipetting volume range offered by...

The biosimilars market is expanding rapidly as the patents expire for an increasing number of high profile biopharmaceutical agents. The complex nature of biologics requires extensive characterization of the production techniques and in vivo effects...

Mass spectrometry is rapidly becoming the method of choice for quantitative analysis of micronutrients such as vitamins B1, B6, B12 and D, as well as for steroids, hormones and many other drugs. For clinical laboratories, the bottleneck of MS-based...

Synthetic biology is, quite literally, the creation of new genetic constructs and novel micro-organisms with innovative functions. Together with systems biology, it provides a platform for translating advances in genomics, proteomics and molecular...

The industrialization of biology has become possible thanks to the automation of repetitive tasks – such as liquid handling – making 24/7 operation feasible. This cost-saving automation addresses several major concerns for biology workflows.

Testosterone levels are typically determined using automated immunoassay analyzers, but this has limitations. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MSMS) offers a selective and accurate alternative, and the Center for Advanced...

The success of hematopoietic stem cell donation is highly dependent on a close match between the donor and recipient human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles. DKMS Life Science Lab performs HLA typing of over a million potential donors a year, relying...

Specialist laboratories engaged in molecular genetics and cytogenetics are turning to automation to cope with ever-increasing sample numbers, implementing tailored solutions designed to handle a range of materials and meet specific testing needs.

Receptor binding assays form an integral part of the preclinical screening service provided by Eurofins Pharma Discovery Services division. The first stage of the protocol is the transfer of tissue samples to a 96-well plate, a process that must be...

Our automation laboratory serves principally the lead optimization stage of drug discovery, so we receive several hundred samples per week from medicinal chemistry labs,” said Dr Claude Dufresne, Senior Investigator, who has been working at the...