New Library Expansion Shows Signs of Early Success

iNovacia, the contract research organisation newly spun out of Biovitrum, is marking its early success in gaining competitive strength by expanding the number of TTP LabTech's comPOUND® storage modules which form the base of its advanced sample handling system. This will take the number of iNovacia's comPOUND modules to three, plus a comPANION 1-2-4 remote arrayer.

The market for contract research in the pharmaceutical industry is undergoing strong growth internationally. Since its launch in April 2006, iNovacia has secured assignments from partners outside the Nordic region and forged an alliance with Asinex Ltd.

iNovacia's own compound library comprises approximately 285K discrete compounds and its internal compound flow is highly automated to provide high throughput screening with rapid response to customers' needs. Stock solutions are prepared and formatted for assay and screening campaigns on individual workstations or on an automated robotic line developed for high throughput tube picking and sample formatting.

The comPOUND storage modules at the heart of iNovacia's screening system offer a safe, inert storage environment with immediate access to each individual microtube for plating or re-testing samples for follow up studies of screening hits.

Designed as a stand-alone modular storage system to fit in any standard laboratory, TTP LabTech's comPOUND has been a good fit for iNovacia, offering an affordable and scaleable method of cherry-picking microtubes from any location within a sample library with unparalleled speed and accuracy. Multiple comPOUND modules are connected in parallel so tubes in different modules can be accessed simultaneously, which means that sample processing actually gets faster as the library storage grows. Sample integrity is assured as each comPOUND storage module offers a hermetically sealed, inert environment at any user-defined temperature from Ambient down to -20°C.