Automate your sample pooling with INTEGRA’s efficient pipetting solutions

INTEGRA’s automated pipetting solutions are helping scientists meet the challenge of efficiently pooling potentially infectious samples prior to testing for disease surveillance and diagnostics, increasing throughput and accelerating time to results.

Pooling of patient samples is commonly used in immunoassays and molecular diagnostics to increase testing capacity while reducing reagent costs for the analysis of SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious agents. Automation of the workflow on INTEGRA’s ASSIST PLUS pipetting robot in combination with the VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipette increases reproducibility and minimizes the need for manual intervention, removing the potential for human errors and the development of repetitive strain injuries, and maximizing hands-free time. The compact ASSIST PLUS fits easily into a laminar flow cabinet, simultaneously protecting both the samples and the user throughout the workflow, whether transferring samples from individual tubes to plates or during the pooling steps. Coupled with the VOYAGER electronic pipette, this elegant, walk-away solution enables parallel transfer of up to 12 samples, with automatic adjustment of tip spacing to accommodate a variety of tube racks. This significantly increases the speed of pooling – and therefore the overall throughput – compared to a single channel pipette, accelerating the time to results.

For maximum flexibility, the ASSIST PLUS can be combined with the full range of INTEGRA VOYAGER and VIAFLO electronic multichannel pipettes, to allow automation of downstream processes such as nucleic acid extraction, PCR set-up and ELISA on the same platform. Simply switch the pipette to perform another application on this flexible and versatile instrument.

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