Choosing a Liquid Handler for Automated Drug Discovery

Automating your drug discovery pipeline has the potential to boost your throughput, increase data quality and reduce the cost per sample significantly. To take full advantage of these benefits it is however essential to choose the required devices carefully. Instruments not matching your needs can quickly become a bottleneck and sabotage your success.

Choosing a Liquid Handler

Since liquid handling is one of the most fundamental, but also one of the most critical and frequent steps in the drug development workflow, choosing the right liquid handler and dispenser is a crucial factor for achieving your goals. To account for broad spectrum of liquid handling requirements, we are offering highly flexible liquid handling solutions covering a volume range from 4 nL up to 1000 µL and labware ranging from single tubes to 1536 well-plates or even Droplet Microarrays.

The initial steps in drug discovery approaches such as sample transfer or compound reformatting frequently require highly flexible liquid transfers in a volume range between 1 µL and 1000 µL from individual tubes, tube racks of microtiter plates. For these tasks, the L.DROP liquid handler is ideally suited. The L.DROP Liquid Handler combines state of the art hardware with cloud-based software to provide an unparalleled user experience. The system generates 90% of the parameters required to translate scientific intent to automation leaving only the final 10% so you can focus your efforts where your expertise offers the most value. The spanning 8-channel pipetting head is air driven and features pressure and flow sensors for real-time volume verification, automated liquid class creation as well as zero-force tip attachment. Despite it`s compact design, the L.DROP offers 20 deck positions with the option to integrate active elements, such heaters, coolers or shakers.

Liquid Handling Automation

The key drivers for automation in drug development are the need for an increased sample throughput and cost reduction. Both aspects can be addressed my miniaturizing your assay volumes. Miniaturization is widely applied in high throughput screening but other drug discovery methods such as cellular assays or next generation sequencing are also highly attractive target applications for miniaturization. To address the needs of nanoliter dispensing, DISPENDIX developed the I.DOT Liquid Handler. 

With a minimal dispensing volume of 4 nL (I.DOT HT), a dead volume < 1 µL for H20  and non-contact dispensing without pipetting tips, the I.DOT significantly reduces reagent and consumable costs.

Due to its self-adjusting droplet size of up to 50 nL, a dispensing speed of up to 100 droplets/second, and the compatibility with various labware formats as well as a wide range of liquids (e.g., DMSO, up to 50% glycerol and cell suspensions, the I.DOT will enable you to increase your throughput while guaranteeing a high degree of flexibility.

The I.DOT will also help you to improve data quality and security by enabling direct dilutions, a superior low volume dispensing accuracy (<5% ≥100 nL and <8% <100 nL), and our unique droplet detection technology detects and counts every droplet released during a dispensing run.

The I.DOT and I.DOT HT support the SiLA interface and can be easily integrated within automated workstations allowing for a complete walk-away solution by combining the I.DOT with additional devices (e.g., plate readers or the G.PURE non-contact NGS Clean-up Device)

To learn more about our non-contact liquid handlers, book a demo today.