High Speed, Low Volume Dispensing for uHTS
Carl Churchill and Don Rose, Ph.D.
Cartesian Technologies, Inc.As 1536 becomes more widely used for ultra high throughput screening (uHTS) applications, there is a need for practical, automated liquid handling solutions for both compound transfer and assay assembly.
HummingBird?Technology for Nanoliter Compound Transfers
The HummingBird Technology is a robust, highly parallel solution for transferring compounds and creating assay plates for uHTS. This patented technology, originally developed by the uHTS group at GlaxoSmithKline (Stevenage, UK), utilizes an array of capillaries to transfer nanoliter volumes of compounds. The capillary dimensions are such that capillary action completely fills the capillary. To dispense, the capillaries are rapidly pressurized to eject the drop. Advantages of the HummingBird technology include:
?Highly parallel. 96 or 384 dispense channels
?Robust: No moving parts
?Non-contact: Dispense into wells containing proteins or cells
?Precision. <10% CV at 100 nL
synQUAD?Technology for High Speed Assay Assembly
The synQUAD?technology does rapid, n-the-fly?dispensing to the plate, much like a large volume inkjet printer. The advantages of the synQUAD technology are:
?Speed. A 1543 well plate can be filled with 4 mL per well in under 60 seconds. This is up to 60 times faster that a conventional 96 channel pippettor.
?Dynamic Range. Volumes from 20 nL to 20 mL can be dispensed.
?Precision. Reproducibility of the dispense is on the order of 2% CV in the microliter range and <10% CV in the nanoliter range.
Cartesian Technologies, Inc. - 17781 Sky Park Circle - Irvine, CA 92614
Tel: (949) 440-3680 Fax: (949) 440-3694 www.cartesiantech.com
High Speed, Low Volume Dispensing for uHTS
Posted - 02/14/2002 : 12:16:51 AM
