New Sample Tracking Solution for Biobanks and Biorepositories

BioTillion introduced its revolutionary sample tracking solution at this week’s SLAS meeting in San Diego. The company showed its new solution, the ColdTrack platform, which enables real-time precision tracking of samples in situ at low temperatures, using RFID technology.

The ColdTrack platform is designed to solve the problems currently associated with maintaining sample collections at ultra low temperatures. Tens of millions of new biological samples are collected and stored annually by pharmaceutical companies, universities, hospitals, diagnostic testing and research centers, national genetic databases and forensic laboratories. Maintaining large collections of samples can be fraught with difficulties arising from inadequate labeling technologies, the inability to automatically locate the samples and a lack of robust connection between the physical sample and archiving software. All of these issues can be further complicated at ultra low temperatures (-80º C or -200º C).

The Coldtrack platform enables electronic tracking by associating a unique electronic tag with each sample, enabling fast mapping of sample boxes. The platform has three components:

ColdTrack Vial - Each ColdTrack sample vial is tagged with a unique RFID identifier that can never be changed, and will never be replicated in another tag, and contains user-definable data that may be modified by a user. The RFID-tagged vials survive exposure to a wide range of temperatures: from liquid nitrogen temperatures (-196 ºC) up to the maximum operating temperature of the vial (121 ºC) without loss of data or functionality.

ColdTrack BoxMapper - A freezer box is mapped by placing a freezer box containing one or more ColdTrack Vials on the BoxMapper. The BoxMapper can map the contents of an 81 sample freezer box in about a second. The reader is connected to a computer using a USB cable.

Integration with LIMS - The BoxMapper is integrated with an expanding group of LIMS packages. The details of the CDR - LIMS interaction is slightly different for each LIMS package but in all cases the box contents are transferred to the LIMS program automatically so that the user does not need to enter vial IDs or box locations.

BioTillion, LLC is a privately held company funded by an NIH SBIR grant and private investors. Visit the BioTillion website for more information.