Pivot Park Screening Centre (Oss, Netherlands) has recently taken delivery of a flexible laboratory automation system from HighRes Biosolutions, forming the core of its newly implemented ultra-high-throughput screening (uHTS) facility. Pivot Park Screening Centre will use the uHTS system to perform biochemical and cell-based screening assays to support research programs across public and private partnerships.
The uHTS system is part of the screening capacity that the Pivot Park Screening Centre is bringing to the market for screening services. Facilities support 384-well and 1536-well cellular and biochemical assay formats. Depending on the actual assay complexity throughputs can exceed 300,000 data-points a day. An in-house compound library of 200,000 high-quality drug-like compounds is currently available for partnership projects. The uHTS system is supported by a group of lab automation experts that have screening experience in an industrial screening setting. To optimize assays to automated screening-ready assays a team of experienced assay developers are available on-site.
Pivot Park’s triple-MicroStar system incorporates HighRes’ patented MicroDock technology, allowing researchers to quickly swap lab devices on and off the three-robot system via modular carts. The MicroDocks allow Pivot Park to deploy the uHTS system for multiple purposes, stay up-to-date with device technology, and to also use their high-value devices optimally, both on the system and offline. The uHTS system also features HighRes’ Cellario 3.0 dynamic scheduling software. Cellario 3.0, HighRes’ latest release, includes features such as device pooling strategies, critical timings and decision nodes to build intelligent contingencies into Pivot Park’s uHTS campaigns.
“The modular concept brings us a high level of flexibility, capabilities to support a broad range of assays and ability to adapt the system depending on needs. The system is designed to reach high throughputs, with internal backups and Cellario software guaranteeing system continuity.” said Jacques van den Broek, Operations and Lab Automation Manager at Pivot Park Screening Centre.
“We are excited about the capabilities of our new system. Its flexibility and capacity allows us to serve a wide variety of life sciences customers, ranging from academic institutions with fundamental research questions to big pharmas that wish to outsource screening of their huge compound libraries. I am pleased to announce that a number of projects are already lined up for Q1 2013!” said Steven van Helden, Business Development and Account Manager at Pivot Park Screening Centre.
“We are looking forward to working with Pivot Park Screening Centre to closely support their drug discovery screening initiatives” said Jack Dawson, Business Director Europe at HighRes Biosolutions. “This system placement is a great example of HighRes Biosolutions’ continued growth within the European market, with a recently completed larger office space and new hires in service and commissioning roles complementing this.”
About Pivot Park Screening Centre
The Pivot Park Screening Centre is part of the Pivot Park (Oss, the Netherlands), a life sciences park that offers lab space, office space and equipment as well as start up support for drug discovery to a range of companies. The park currently houses 24 companies.
The screening centre is a spin-off from the former MSD research organization and provides high-throughput screening services using state-of-the-art robotic facilities and a high-quality compound library.
About HighRes Biosolutions
HighRes Biosolutions, Inc. (www.highresbio.com) is the leader in the design and construction of innovative robotic systems and laboratory devices used by pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic research laboratories. HighRes helps scientists accelerate such research areas as drug discovery, high-throughput genotyping, siRNA screening, next-generation sequencing sample prep, biorepository science, molecular diagnostics, and more. HighRes offers highly flexible, expandable and modular integrated systems and bench-top devices that are easily configured (and reconfigured) for fast-paced, dynamic laboratories.
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