Increased Throughput for Infectious Disease Research

Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc announced that it has supplied a Thermo Scientific KingFisher Flex magnetic particle processor to Labor Krone and IMOLTEC (University of Applied Sciences, Bielefeld), Germany to enable research into H1N1 screening.

Using the advanced flexibility and high-speed processing capabilities of the KingFisher Flex, Dr. Carsten Tiemann, head of the department, was able to streamline high-throughput workflows and optimise turnaround time for a highly efficient protocol. Labor Krone and IMOLTEC provide services to German and English healthcare providers, from drug testing to infectious disease and molecular genetics. Following the 2009 pandemic of Influenza A H1N1 (Swine Flu),

researchers sought to improve the speed of detection of viral pathogenesis for clinical and epidemiological purposes. By using the new Kingfisher Flex system, researchers have since increased throughput to as many as 96 samples per hour.

“As viral strains increasingly mutate, they become harder for the adaptive immune system to fight and, therefore, they pose a significant health threat to the general public,” said Dr Tiemann. “In our work within infectious diseases, specifically H1N1 screening, we found the KingFisher Flex to be extremely fast and reliable for nucleic acid extraction for subsequent downstream analysis.”

The extraction of high yields of pure nucleic acid is critical to the generation of subsequent downstream data. The KingFisher Flex uses patented magnetic separation technology for the rapid preparation of nucleic acids, proteins or cells. As a truly flexible solution, the 24-rod magnetic head in combination with a 24-well deep plate allows users to achieve processing volumes up to 5mL. Alternatively, for higher throughput requirements, 96 samples can be processed from 20 – 1000μL total volume using the 96-rod magnetic head and 96-well deep or shallow plates.