Advanced Laboratory System Optimizes Automated Liquid Handlers

ARTEL, the technology leader in liquid delivery quality assurance, announces a new laboratory innovation to improve the performance of automated liquid handlers.

The new MVS™ ADVANCED is the first system capable of verifying multichannel instrumentation using non-aqueous test solutions, such as DMSO. The MVS ADVANCED enhances data integrity and allows laboratories to optimize automated liquid handling equipment with up to 384 channels. User-intuitive and portable, this precision measurement system can be used bench-top to provide accurate and precise volumetric measurements in minutes, strengthening confidence in laboratory data.

“As liquid handling technology continues to advance and becomes more miniaturized, new methodologies are needed to verify instrument and assay performance,” states Kirby Pilcher, President, ARTEL. “We recognize the rapidly increasing number of laboratories working with alternative test solutions and with higher density 384-well plates, characterized by minute volumes. With MVS ADVANCED these laboratories can now ensure that their automated liquid handlers are dispensing volumes to specification, maximizing equipment and assay productivity. And since the opportunity to reduce well failure by two percentage points can be valued at more than $1 million in some high throughput testing laboratories, the MVS ADVANCED’s impact on efficiency is evident.”

Fully customizable, the MVS ADVANCED can optimize automated liquid handling instrumentation with test solutions with the same viscosity as solutions used in actual assays. The system can also be used with standard microtiter plates and is easily integrated with existing automated liquid handlers. Frequent checks are possible because the system’s verification process is completed in less than ten minutes. This results in greater assurance of data integrity. Also, the MVS ADVANCED provides traceable data, facilitating regulatory compliance.

To help customers customize the MVS ADVANCED and integrate it into existing operations, ARTEL will include value-added services, providing on-site installation, training and application support services. This includes helping laboratories to program system software for specific error tolerances so that equipment operating out of specification can be immediately flagged and adjusted.

Like ARTEL’s other liquid delivery verification systems, the MVS ADVANCED relies on the company’s patented Ratiometric Photometry™. This technology uses two specially formulated reagents that are each measured and compared to combat accuracy and precision problems typical at the minute liquid volumes used in today’s life science laboratories.