Research scientists at Mumbai-based Nicholas Piramal India are automating a variety of biochemical and cell-based drug discovery assays with a Tecan Freedom EVO 200 liquid handling workstation.
This is one of the first fully functional, integrated screening facilities in India and the assays are designed to identify new lead compounds for the treatment of cancers, metabolic diseases and inflammatory disorders.
The workstation is controlled by Tecan's Freedom EVOware Plus software, which combines pipetting and scheduling for simultaneous testing of hundreds of compounds in triplicate.
"Being able to automate all the assays using a variety of different cell lines with a single platform was critical in deciding which robot to choose," said Dr Asha Almeida, group leader at the Nicholas Piramal Research Center. "Our current throughput is 10,000 data points per week and, in two months, we can complete a workload that would take an entire year to perform manually.
"Automating our assays using the Freedom EVO system has significantly reduced the hit to lead transformation time," she added. "In the near future, we will be able to double our data throughput by switching to a 384-well assay format."
