Roche Diagnostics and Caliper Life Sciences Offer Integrated High-Throughput Solution with the LightCycler^® 480 Instrument

Roche Diagnostics and Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. today announced a joint product offering that combines Caliper’s Twister^® II Microplate Handler and Roche’s LightCycler^® 480 Real-Time PCR system.

The integrated product offering provides customers with a cost-effective and fully-scaleable solution for laboratories to complete high-throughput screening with increased automation capability and walk-away time. The two companies have also agreed to co-market and promote the joint solution into the life science research market.

“We continuously strive to provide our customers with proven technology that simplifies processes within the lab without compromising accuracy and precision,” said Manfred Baier, Head of Roche Applied Science, a business area of Roche Diagnostics. “Caliper’s Twister II is the industry standard for plate and tip loading. Our customers have confidence in this technology so it was a natural fit to work with Caliper to offer an integrated solution.”

The Twister II is a plug-and-play bench-top plate handler with a walk-away capacity to stack and load up to 200 standard microplates. When integrated with Roche’s LightCycler^® 480 system, a multiwell, plate-based real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis platform, the system doubles the throughput screening capacity for highly accurate detection of nucleic acids and genotyping. Caliper’s iLink Pro automation software provides the built-in adapter necessary to attach multiple LightCycler^® 480 instruments to the Twister II for throughput screening in real-time PCR analysis. Together, the Twister II and LightCycler^® 480 instrument eliminate the need for frequent manual re-loading. The solution is a viable investment that evolves with the needs of the lab to ensure maximum productivity.

“Researchers are constantly faced with improving workflow and automating tasks while maximizing the benefit gained by implementing technologies in the lab,” said Jean-Louis Rufener, Vice President, Worldwide Marketing and Sales, Caliper Life Sciences. “We teamed with Roche to meet this challenge and provide laboratories with proven technologies, from industry leaders, at competitive prices.”

The integrated Twister II and LightCycler^® 480 Instrument is available from both Caliper Life Sciences and Roche Diagnostics. For more information visit the article webpage.