Scienion's sciFLEXARRAYER Optimally Suited for Carbohydrate Array Production

Scienion’s innovative dispensing technology is well suited for a variety of applications wherever contact-free precise handling of ultra low volume liquids is needed. The sciFLEYXARRAYER has also demonstrated to be the best choice for the production of carbohydrate arrays.

Glycobiology plays an increasing role in life sciences research as glycans are involved in many functions in the living cell. Research in the glycomics arena is beginning to impact drug discovery, especially the development of carbohydrate-based vaccines.

Prof. Peter H. Seeberger from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam is one of the worldwide renowned scientists in this area. He and his team aim at elucidating the role of complex oligosaccharides involved in biological processes of medical relevance. They are particularly interested in understanding the recognition events responsible for the interactions of oligosaccharides with proteins that control cell growth, cell differentiation, cell-cell-interactions, bacterial attachment to target cells and signaling events involving the extracellular matrix. “We focus on the automated synthesis of different kinds of complex oligosaccharides and carbohydrate microarrays play an important role in various parts of our research activities – as versatile screening platforms and potential future diagnostic tools”, says Seeberger. “After comparing different dispensing systems we decided on the sciFLEXARRAYER S3 as it ideally meets our needs for the precise handling of small amounts of our precious substances and allows for the reproducible production of carbohydrate microarrays.”

“After tremendous advances in genomics and proteomics, today glycomics is becoming a field of increasing scientific interest and Peter Seeberger is doing groundbreaking work in this field”, says Dr. Holger Eickhoff, CEO of Scienion AG. “Carbohydrate microarrays have become important tools to investigate binding events that involve sugars and Scienion provides an ideal technology for handling these precious samples. High throughput analysis of carbohydrate interactions in a microarray format allows to study a wide range of carbohydrate binding partners, including proteins, RNA, whole cells and viruses. We are looking forward to further collaborate with the MPI of Colloids and Interfaces to move the technology ahead.“