Liquid handling workstation automates tropical disease research

The Clinical Pharmacology Department in the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), Bangkok, Thailand, has chosen Tecan’s Freedom EVO® platform to automate research into the pharmacology of anti-malarial and anti-influenza drugs.

Professor Niklas Lindegardh, Head of Department, explained: “Our studies focus on malaria and influenza, and the main thrust of our research is the development of

new methods and assays to quantify these drugs in biological fluids. Our Freedom EVO liquid handling workstation performs aliquoting and preparation of patient

samples, automating a range of preparation methods, such as solid-phase or liquid-liquid extractions and protein precipitations. We have been able to move from

performing all these steps manually to automating everything on the Freedom EVO 200, and analyses that previously took around five hours now take only 20 minutes

for 96 samples.”

“The platform configuration was tailored to fulfill our exact requirements and we worked with engineers from Tecan Singapore to set up the system and program the basic structure of the process scripts. We have since been able to refine the scripts, creating new processes and fine tuning the system to accommodate our sample preparation requirements. Overall, the platform is reliable and we are very happy with the support we receive from Tecan; they always respond quickly to our needs,” concluded Professor Lindegardh.