MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the liquid handling market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Labcyte Inc. with the 2012 North American Award for Product Innovation for its Echo liquid handler. While various liquid handling technologies provide single improvements, no other instrument incorporates the wide range of advantages provided by the Echo liquid handler.
Setting out to revolutionize liquid handling, Labcyte developed a platform enabling assay miniaturization due to the transfer of 2.5 nanoliter (nL) volumes, auto calibration for various liquid types, non-contact dispensing leading to zero risk of contamination, decreased hands-on time, lower reagent and consumable costs, and greater precision and accuracy.
Labcyte's Echo liquid handling platform uses acoustic energy to move very precise amounts of fluids. When a microplate is placed into the instrument, a transducer located underneath generates sound waves that eject a precise droplet sized 2.5 nL upward to a surface suspended above. For greater volume needs, the instrument dispenses droplets at a pace of up to 500 per second to build up the desired volume. No pipette tips, pin tools, or nozzles are needed, meaning no washing is required and nothing physically touches the liquid, eliminating contamination compared to other liquid handling instruments.
"This feature is quite valuable in very precise and controlled applications, such as compound screening for drug discovery, ADME Tox studies, cell-based assays, and diagnostics," said Frost & Sullivan Senior Industry Analyst Christi Bird. "In addition, this feature eliminates costs associated with pipette tips, greatly reducing a user's liquid handling budget."
Further, the Echo liquid handler's ability to allow precise assay miniaturization creates a tremendous advantage for applications involving precious samples and high-throughput projects. The platform also boasts scalability and speed, with the ability to transfer 800,000 different samples a day to 96-, 384-, 1536- or 3456-well plates. Labcyte provides application-specific software solutions for plate reformatting, cherry-pick lists, dose-response curves, and microarraying.
"Labcyte's easy-to-use interfaces optimize protocols and provide greater flexibility for a user to easily move between various liquid handling applications," noted Bird. "Given the release of its revolutionary Dynamic Fluid Analysis™ capability in early 2012, Labcyte is poised to gain even greater traction in the liquid handling marketplace by enabling auto calibration to adjust to different sample types."
After placing a microplate of liquid into the Echo instrument, the Dynamic Fluid Analysis™ bounces sound off each microplate well to determine the liquid's features and subsequently modifies the instrument's liquid transfer settings. This software algorithm thus eliminates manual error and reduces time-to-result. It also allows for challenging applications that require transfer of viscous or low surface tension fluids, particularly at low volumes.
Labcyte is also building its line of consumables through partnerships with high-quality reagent providers, including Thermo Fisher Scientific and Qiagen. These mutually beneficial partnerships help expand Labcyte's brand awareness, drive instrument adoption, and provide greater ease-of-use to Echo users.
During its quest to transform liquid handling, Labcyte has adopted several best practices to ensure its R&D efforts are in line with customer needs and market trends. The company has aggressively sought patents in multiple countries, earning 62 patents worldwide since its launch.
"With a solid technology in place, the firm foresees greater expansion into additional liquid dispensing opportunities, such as PCR workflows with its collaboration with Roche, single cell and cell lysate analysis, and handling of blood for diagnostic testing," concluded Bird. "A rapidly growing installed base and an expanding number of applications under development will help Labcyte maintain its strong double-digit growth in the future."
For its commitment to technology innovation and revolutionizing liquid handling, Labcyte is an ideal recipient in the liquid handling market of the Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation Award. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed an innovative element in a product by leveraging leading-edge technologies. The award recognizes the value-added features/benefits of the product and the increased ROI it offers customers, which, in turn, increases customer acquisition and overall market penetration potential.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
About Labcyte
Labcyte, a global life science instrumentation company, is revolutionizing liquid handling. Echo liquid handling systems use sound to precisely transfer liquids. The environmentally friendly Echo platform generates better results with significantly lower costs when compared to traditional liquid handling systems that have high running costs, are prone to transfer errors, risk sample contamination and waste large amounts of plastic lab consumables. Labcyte instruments are used worldwide by all of the top ten pharmaceutical companies, as well as by small to midsize pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, contract research organizations and academic institutions. Our customers work across a wide spectrum of biology including drug discovery, genomics, proteomics, diagnostics, imaging mass spectrometry and live cell transfer. Labcyte, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, has global sales and support. Labcyte has 46 U.S., 10 European, 5 Japanese and 1 Chinese patents with additional U.S. and international filings. For more information, visit www.labcyte.com.
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