Thermo Fisher Scientific and Gentel Biosciences Collaborate to Introduce a NEW 96 Well Multiplex Platform

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, and Gentel^® Biosciences, a protein microarray life sciences company, today announced the two companies have completed the first stage of a collaboration to shift microarrays to a new 96 well configuration. This new patent-pending product will evolve the current microarray offerings toward an “ELISA-like” format to increase the speed and volume of multiplex applications. The new platform conforms to the SBS microplate standard and is amenable to the automated processing of thousands of samples per day.

Thermo Fisher Scientific offers the platform under the Thermo Scientific SmartPlex™ brand name with a range of microarray chemistry configurations including aminosilane and epoxysilane. Gentel Biosciences offers the platform engineered with a proprietary ultra-thin nitrocellulose surface chemistry under the APiX™96 brand name. Gentel has also initiated development of content-based research kits including quantitative multiplex immunoassays, antibody and antigen arrays in the 96-well format.

“The SmartPlex platform uses the superior binding surface of glass to enable a range of widely accepted surface chemistries to be used reliably in multiplex applications in a traditional microtiter-plate format,” said David Moore, Director of Research and Development for the slides and specialty glass business of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

“ELISAs have long been the ‘gold standard’ for protein measurements. Now that multiplex immunoassays have come of age, higher throughput configurations of the technology are a natural step in providing the next generation of analytical tools for protein measurements,” said Randy Durnell, Vice President of Commercial Operations at Gentel.