ALA Awards at LabAutomation 2007

The Association for Laboratory Automation (ALA), a multi-disciplinary, non-profit scientific association spanning diverse industries and technology sectors, announced the winner of the US$10,000 Innovation Award. Andre Marziali, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) was honored for his podium presentation, "A Powerful New Device and Method for Detecting and Concentrating Nucleic Acids from Complex and Dilute Samples.”

The winner was announced during the closing plenary session at LabAutomation2007, a conference and exhibition on emerging laboratory technologies. LabAutomation2007 was held January 27-31, 2007 at the Palm Springs Convention Center (Palm Springs, CA; USA). The conference, which played host to some 4,600 attendees, featured 19 short courses, 172 poster presentations, 27 academic travel awards, 22 industry-sponsored workshops, more than 35 new products, and 217 exhibitors in 397 booths. Registrants traveled to Palm Springs from 39 countries around the world.

Recognizing the best new products on the exhibit floor, ALA's first-ever New Product Award (NPA) Designation recognized the top three outstanding new products showcased at LabAutomation2007. This year's winners were: Qiagen, Inc. (Hilden, Germany) for the QIAcube, Corning Incorporated (Corning, NY, USA) for the Corning Epic system, and Symyx Technologies (Santa Clara, CA, USA) for Symyx Benchtop Systems.

Qiagen, the provider of sample and assay technologies for life sciences, applied testing, and molecular diagnostics, received the award for QIAcube, the company's new platform for sample preparation.

The QIAcube is a compact platform incorporating novel and proprietary technologies that allows users to fully automate the processing of almost all Qiagen consumable products that today are used manually in over 40,000 laboratories throughout the world. The extremely versatile, compact system in the low throughput range creates a new level of utility and opportunities to free up time, reduce costs, and increase performance for customers in any laboratory conducting molecular biology research in life science, applied testing, and molecular diagnostics. The platform is priced at a fraction of current instrumentation products and was launched for use with up to 100 protocols that address almost any need in sample processing. The protocols are based on the identical Qiagen consumable products used manually today--enabling fast and effortless migration of existing Qiagen consumable users to the QIAcube.

The Corning Epic system consists of an SBS-standard 384-well microplate with optical sensors and high throughput system (HTS)-compatible microplate reader capable of reading up to 40,000 wells per 8 hours and a set of label-free, direct-bind, and functional assay protocols. Its sensitivity of 5pg/mm2 enables the detection of the binding of a 300Da compound to a 70kDa immobilized target with coefficients of variation (CVs) of 10% or less. This powerful combination of features and performance capabilities not only enables scientists to evaluate many of the biomolecular interactions in molecular and cellular biology, but also provides the added benefit of integration with an already installed HTS capital base. In addition, the Epic system makes the screening of intractable targets and pathway interactions that cannot be screened today possible.

Symyx Technologies, Inc. announced the release of Benchtop Systems--a self-contained, software-driven, system for automating multiple steps of experimental procedures. Benchtop systems increase testing capacity by 10–100 times and take labor-intensive, repetitive work away from scientists, freeing them to better utilize their training and talents. The system automates multiple steps of experimental procedures and comes with standard configurations and applications that are designed to accelerate R&D while reducing costs.




Related Links:
Qiagen
Corning
Symyx Technologies