Do you automate?

We have purchased an AKTA Xpress from GE Healthcare over 18 mo. ago. The 4 module version was advertised to perform 1 to 4 step protein purification in series and parallel. To date, we have had a success rate of >95%. We use the system for both large and small scale protein purifications, construct screening, buffer optimization and to a small extent, method development. It has been possible to shorten a 3 day protein purification protocol down to 6 hours.
The results have been astounding and has expedited several projects. Also, the Xpress is user friendly and the Unicorn software is easy to use. Since most of the protein that is purified is for structural biology purposes, quantity and high quality are paramount and the AKTA Xpress has been able to deliver on this.

Dr. Rani,

The endpoint of our automated cell culture is a Zeiss automated Elispot reader. We are using rudimentary KSrun software, and there is always a trade-off between missing spots and detecting non-existent spots. The most crucial parameter is the Threshold, which determines how much a signal must differ from background in order to be counted. Very low signals are a problem inherent in the technique and we just live with it. We always employ a standard curve in each assay and use that as a measure of our results.

What technique did you decide to automate, and what pushed you to make the decision?

We have a cell-based assay that relies on propagating cells for two weeks in 96 well plates. Cells are dislodged by pipetting, which is tedious and has the potential for causing repetitive strain injury when we are working with hundreds of such plates. With an automated cell culture setup, technicians save their wrists and can devote their time to more complicated experiments.

Which equipment did your lab invest in?

We have a custom-built system based on a Tecan Evolution 150 platform. It incorporates a Laconic incubator that provides consistent temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxoide flow. Plates are lifted out of the incubator and transferred to the Tecan on a conveyor, where they are moved by a robotic manipulation arm to sites of liquid handling. The entire system is enclosed in a laminar flow hood to provide biocontainment.

Are you happy with the off-the-shelf robotic system you purchased, or have you tweaked it in creative ways to make it conform to your needs?

The system was installed more than two years ago, and we have continually modified it ever since. Improper positioning of plates, crashing manipulator arms, and software glitches have plagued us throughout. Tecan engineers have been on-site practically every month to diagnose and fix recurring problems with the system.

Are there experiments you wish you could automate, but no solution on the market that would get it right?

I would like to identify individual fluorescently labeled cells and observe them over long-term culture. Additionally, I need to identify wells that contain one and only one fluorescently labeled cell. Most high-content imaging systems are not sensitive enough for this task, and are unable to work in a 96 well format. The CloneSelect imaging line from Genetix comes closer, but its cost is prohibitive.

I was the Director of an Oncology Reseach lab and had a tissue culture, biochemistry and Immunohistochemistry labs as a part of my research. The lab also did clinical testing on breast cancer biopsies and had to process several breast biopsies per day.
The automation I used was in immuno-histochemistry lab for routine processing of slides for a procedure that was developed in the lab. The automatic processor called Varistain was very helpful to the technicians who were free to take care of other procedures requiring their personal skills.
The biochemistry lab also processed large numbers of scintillation vials used for counting radioactivity. One automation I would have liked, (but was unavailable)was a way to label all the vials with labels of our choice. The techs spent an awful lot of time in labelling each vial.
Automation of routine procedures saves a lot of time, freeing up the techs for procedures that require their special skills. It reduces the "tiring factor" and improves the quality and quantity of their work. This is one of the reasons that as I developed a technique (patented in USA) for analysing cancer biopsies, I made sure that various processing steps are automation friendly.

I have been using Zeiss ELISPOT Reader for a while now. The reason I purchased it was that it will give accurate counts of spot forming cells. However, I have been very disappointed with the automated system. I don't know how other labs around the world are counting their spots and how do they trust the counts that software gives. The reason for this disbelief in the automated system is that in spite of teaching as to what spots to count, it counts non-existant spots and leaves clearly defined spots. So in the absence of accurate numbers that we should get, we have devised a way to get the accurate numbers. We teach it to delete all the non-exitant spots, while doing so it also deletes some of the actual spots. We then manually count the spots which are not counted by the software and add it to the count given by the maching (the corrected count after deleting the non-existant spots). This is the best we could do.