BioAscent has invested in a new Echo 650 Series Acoustic Liquid Handler and Access Workstation to support the automation of assay ready plates.

The new instrument, together with BioAscent's two existing Echo 550s, has increased capacity in response to considerable and sustained growth in customer demand. 

BioAscent's compound management customers already benefit from rapid compound sourcing and aggregation, secure storage, up-to-date visibility of all samples and orders with a full audit trail, and rapid delivery of solids or liquids in any format, up to and including screen-ready Assay Ready Plates (ARPs).

The Echo 650 is the latest in a series of capital investments in new equipment and has been operational since last October, with customers already benefiting from greater capacity and flexibility of assay ready plate production and compound pooling. The new instrument can:

• Enable assay miniaturisation in a broad range of applications 

• Transfer from 384-well and 1536-well microplates

• Provide accurate, precise, contact-free acoustic transfer in volumes as low as 2.5 nL

Commenting on the investment, Sylviane Boucharens, Chief Operating Officer said:

"We pride ourselves on offering a secure infrastructure and rapid compound management service that is significantly ahead of other CROs. Over the last two years, we have invested over £1.2m in our compound management infrastructure and will continue to do so to meet customer requirements. The latest addition of the Echo 650 and Access Workstation enables greater automation in preparing assay ready plates, driving greater time efficiencies for our customers, as well as providing the flexibility to meet their plating needs.

"We can produce dose response curves with the addition of control compounds resulting in a complete assay ready plate and ship these across the world to various CROs. So far these have included CROs in Europe, China and America.

"Very few of our competitors can offer assay ready plate production, despite the increasing demand for them from customers. The ability to rapidly produce custom assay ready plates from discovery compound collections is a key capability that is especially critical to innovative biotechs working with a network of CROs, allowing them to accelerate their design-make-test cycles whilst benefiting from big pharmaceutical-grade quality control and audit trail."

BioAscent recently reported a 50% increase in demand from biotech and "virtual" biotech companies for its outsourced compound management services, which follows a doubling of compound management services from 2018 to 2020 - also primarily driven by biotech customers.

To find out more about BioAscent's compound management capabilities and expertise, click here.