Level 7 Automation

#SLAS2024 Review highlights part 2: 2) Rapid pipetting accuracy devices (Hamilton Company Veriplate and Next Advance CheckIt Go system) Liquid class measurements have typically been limited to either gravimetric (Hamilton LVK) or colourimetric (Artel) modalities. I was very happy to see a quick and simple method for determining pipette accuracy that leverages micro-channels to make measurements. Add your liquid, watch it traverse through the channels and see the final volume in real time with your own eyes. Simple, but effective. Some things I like about these devices are the ability to measure your relevant liquid, as opposed to a companies dye that may have different viscosity or liquid properties to what you actually want to measure. I also like that it is platform-agnostic. With the VeriPlate and the CheckIt being so cheap and accessible, it breaks down the barrier to proper volume testing - no more needing to rely on a back-pipetting step with a hand pipette to see how accurate your dispense was. While these systems are great for checking your accuracy, if you are looking to do a proper development of a new liquid class, they don't quite fit the bill. The Hamilton LVK can be set up to take hundreds of measurements in an automated manner to tweak your liquid class just right. The Artel can give you independent measurements of each channel in a 96-channel head of a liquid handler. Either of these steps would be very slow or very costly with the Veriplate or the CheckIt. With that said, there are many protocols in the lab that don't require 100% accuracy or precision, and this fact is often overlooked by scientists looking for perfection (and not clued into by engineers without a science background!). If you're adding enzyme to a reaction, it's often stoichiometrically in excess. Your need for "exactly 2.5uL" is realistically more like "at least 2uL", and acknowledging this fact from the beginning of development can make things go much quicker and more smoothly. If the biology works in practice, the CV of your pipetting step doesn't matter. Realizing these small details are why someone who is trained as both a biologist and an engineer can bring the most value to automating your lab processes.

After a great time at #SLAS2024 last week, I needed some time to decompress and think about the transformational technology that I saw. I'm going to highlight in a few posts what I think are going to have the biggest impact. 1) Trisonic Discovery For me personally, I was most impressed by Trisonic and their A1 Acoustic Dispenser. Acoustic Droplet Ejection (ADE) technologies have always blown my mind - doubled by the fact that this technology (in the lab automation space) is more than 15 years old. The Beckman Echo (the original ADE liquid handler) is an amazing instrument, and everyone I have talked to is thoroughly impressed, but at a price point in the mid 6-figures, it is basically inaccessible to most startup labs. Enter Trisonic - while still in the prototyping phase - they are finally bringing a competitor to market. The Echo has a number of associated pumps, vacuums, cooling apparatuses and de-gassers, which makes it A) expensive and B) a large footprint. I asked Trisonic how they could get away without these (as these components clearly add a lot to the cost), and I loved their response: "We are driven by the data, and we only included components that we saw were important". Driven by data is a personal ethos of mine, and to see a company making such a sophisticated product with the same ethos was refreshing. Especially if that can democratize the nano-dispensing market to allow smaller labs access to this game-changing technology. I love that they're a lean company with full stack expertise. Bringing a product to market is no small feat, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where these guys go in the next year.

Excited to be at #SLAS2024 in Boston to keep up with all the exciting advances in the field of Lab Automation! #slas2024 #labautomation