Thursday 9 December 2010

Precision and high-throughput to AssayMAP micro-scale chromatography

BioSystem Development and Agilent Technologies Inc have announced a collaborative agreement to implement BioSystem Development’s patented technology on the established Agilent Bravo automated liquid handling platform.

BioSystem Development is a privately held life sciences analytics company and creator of AssayMAP high-throughput micro-chromatography technology. The combined technologies will produce for the first time true chromatography separations on disposable, 5ul packed-bed columns in a 96-channel SBS microplate format.

The collaboration creates a versatile integrated solution for protein sample preparation and processing. The new open-platform instrument combines the Agilent Bravo with 96AM head with AssayMAP cartridges that are packed with any chromatographic resin or immobilized enzyme. The new instrument enables a broad range of standard analytical workflows to be rapidly reformatted to this precision, high-throughput platform.
“Customers are challenged with delivering large numbers of high-quality samples to our analytical platforms,” said Nitin Sood, general manager of Agilent’s Automation Solutions Division. “The Bravo liquid handling platform for the AssayMAP system enables our customers to reproducibly provide high-purity, highly parallelized samples to their multiple analytics platforms in formats they can use right away. We believe that the combined strength of Agilent’s automation and the AssayMAP technology will improve biologics discovery and development, reducing cycle times and improving the quality of results.”

The Bravo with 96AM head instrument will be launched at the Lab Automation meeting in January. Agilent will become a single point of contact for complete protein purification solutions built on the Bravo and AssayMAP technologies. Agilent will continue to expand the AssayMAP content portfolio leveraging extensive expertise in sample preparation applications, and BioSystem Development will focus on bringing new chemistries and content partners into the platform under their AssayMAP Alliance program.

“Agilent’s innovative automation solutions are critical to the development of the AssayMAP platform,” said Scott Fulton, founder and CEO of BioSystem Development, LLC. “Agilent is enabling the evolution of AssayMAP from simple ‘bind-and-elute’ workflows to true high-precision chromatography on an established fully automated platform. We look forward to Agilent helping us to move well beyond the bioprocess development market that is our current focus.”

Agilent Technologies Inc