Automated Platform enables quick response to Animal Disease Outbreaks

Molecular biologists at the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety rely on two Freedom EVO® workstations to perform automated nucleic acid extraction as part of a busy routine veterinary surveillance workload. Dr Sandra Revilla Fernández, Head of the Molecular Biology Department, explained: “As part of a compulsory European Union surveillance program for the H5N1 avian influenza virus, we were receiving hundreds of dead wild birds every day and performing all our nucleic acid extractions by hand; it was crazy! We needed to automate our laboratory as much as we could, as quickly as we could. Colleagues across Europe working in the same field recommended the Freedom EVO 150 workstation, and this open, flexible platform suited me perfectly; I knew that avian influenza was just the tip of the iceberg, and that our workload was going to significantly grow in the future.”

“The Freedom EVO gives us the flexibility to prepare different sample types, as well as to automate both vacuum- and magnetic bead-based methods, and can complete our extraction protocol in around two hours, with real-time PCR taking a further two and a half hours. The system is very reliable, and its efficient washing procedures help to avoid cross-contamination. We have since purchased a second Freedom EVO in response to an outbreak of bluetongue throughout Europe and, with two Freedom EVO systems and a super­-efficient workflow, we know we will have the results ready on time.”