Tecan’s Freedom EVO helps German university improve efficiency

Tecan has helped the University of Konstanz in Germany to establish an innovative technique to achieve more cost-effective screening of small molecules.

The university has been able to use the MultiChannel Arm (MCA) 384 tool on the company's Freedom EVO workstation to achieve reliable liquid transfers down to just 80 nanoliters at its screening centre.

With a library of over 38,000 compounds for screening, the center was looking to eliminate the wasteful pre-dilution of stock solutions, thus enabling large-scale studies to be performed more cost-effectively.

The minimum transfer volume specified for the MCA 384 is 500 nanoliters, but the team was able to achieve reliable transfer of just 80 nanoliters using a technique of their own creation.

Silke Muller, a biologist in the screening facility, said: "We work with a wide range of samples … using various high-throughput screening assay formats according to the needs of individual research groups. Our Freedom EVO therefore needs to be very flexible in the types of assays we can perform."

Tecan is a leading global provider of laboratory instruments and solutions in biopharmaceuticals, forensics and clinical diagnostics, with a sales and service network covering 52 countries.