Precision Nanolitre Deposition in Action

Innovadyne Technologies, Inc and Horizon Instruments Ltd recently collaborated to produce a reagent deposition system tailored to the exact requirements of a medical diagnostics manufacturer.

The customer, an innovative start-up company within a leading diagnostics group, had identified Innovadyne as the provider of a patented non-contact deposition technique for providing highly precise and repeatable droplets in the nanolitre to microlitre range. The Nanodrop™ system supplied by Innovadyne utilises motorised syringes to aspirate and a pressurised solenoid valve arrangement to dispense. While these components are common to other providers, unique to Innovadyne is the constant presence of clean system fluid in the syringes and solenoid valve assembly. This preserves the accuracy and repeatability of deposition throughout the lifetime of the instrument. The fact that the liquid being deposited never contacts these critical components has multiple benefits, from reducing maintenance and maintaining precision to opening up many options for the deposition of challenging substances. Particulate suspensions, bead- and cell-based mixtures and reactive solutions can all be dispensed. The original need by this customer to deposit a fine slurry of 1µm diameter ferromagnetic particles was another factor that led them to select the Nanodrop™.

While the bench-top Nanodrop™ system offered the ideal deposition technology for efficacy testing and initial test-kit development, Innovadyne did not offer a system with the whole range of functionality needed by the client for clinical trial batches or initial production.

Enter Horizon Instruments, an integrator specializing in custom-built automation within the medical diagnostic and pharmaceutical sectors and well known to both the customer and to Innovadyne. The very close cooperation between all three parties led to an exceptionally effective and fully integrated solution that now forms part of the 500 part-per-hour pilot-scale production facility.

The customer’s pilot-scale production line was based on trays of product being processed. Horizon integrated the 8-tip Nanodrop™ dispensing harness into an X-Y-Z motion platform that allowed multiple depositions onto each of the 44 devices on a tray. The user-friendly interface was via a PC with windows-based custom software written by Horizon. This controls the X, Y and Z axes, the wash station and all aspects of the Nanodrop™ system. Innovadyne’s willingness to cooperate fully on the project enabled Horizon to access sub-functions within the Nanobuilder software and provide new solutions tailored to this customer’s needs.

Horizon developed a series of tokenised instructions that bundled individual Nanobuilder commands into a useful instruction set. For example, the 'Move tips over wash station' instruction contained over twenty individual Nanobuilder axis & pump move commands. This simplified control system allows the user complete freedom to quickly define repeatable arrays of dispensed micro dots in almost limitless combinations of number, volume and position. Incorporation of the Nanobuilder structure into the host software enables a seamless transition from bench top development to pilot batches and full-scale production.

‘Smart-valve’ technology on the Nanodrop™ allows different amounts of fluids to be deposited from each of the eight channels as a standard function. However, Horizon was able to offer this customer the ability to vary the aspirate volumes on individual channels also. This specific enhancement was particularly significant since very costly reagents were being used in some channels. The aspirate and dispense cycles can now be perfectly tailored to suit the individual dispensed volumes and the size of the harness reducing any wastage of reagents to an absolute minimum.

In addition to integration and automation expertise, Horizon Instruments further complimented Innovadyne’s technology with an in-depth understanding of the validation requirements within the medical device sector. One of the key requirements laid down by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the need for control electronic data and user access rights - detailed in CFR21, Part 11. Horizon’s integration of the Nanodrop™ enabled a fully validated and documented system to be delivered incorporating Innovadyne’s patented technology and all of the customer’s additional requirements.

Both Horizon and Innovadyne are excited about prospects for further collaboration and are looking forward to building on the success of the last project.