High Throughput Nanolitre Pipetting 

Scientists working at the Leibniz-Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (FMP) in Berlin, Germany, are benefiting from the low volume pipetting capability of a MultiChannel Arm (MCA) 384 for siRNA and small molecule screening, from Tecan (Switzerland). Martin Neuenschwander, an automation scientist working in Dr Jens Peter von Kries’ Screening Unit at the FMP, explained: “We have been using laboratory automation for small molecule screens for several years, and have four Freedom EVO 200 platforms equipped with a variety of liquid handling arms. Material is often limited for compound screening, so we need to be able to pipette volumes down to 300 nl, and have invested in a new Freedom EVO platform optimised for this work.”

“Using the 15 µl tips, the new workstation’s MCA 384 can accurately and reproducibly pipette down to 300 nl without the need to use any special techniques. This allows us to reduce our assay volumes to just 30 µl while still maintaining a DMSO concentration of less than 1%. We control almost everything from Freedom EVOware, which is perfect for rapid, high throughput screening using fairly simple worklists, but still allows more complex programming for assays where the timing is crucial. It gives us so much flexibility.”