Product News: Hamilton Robotics and New England Biolabs Collaborate to Automate Sample Preparation for Next-Generation Sequencing

Hamilton Robotics and New England Biolabs®, Inc. (NEB®) announced today that the companies are collaborating to develop automated solutions for NEB’s NEBNext® reagent line for NGS sample preparation, including a fast and robust low-input option for high-throughput Illumina® library preparation. The jointly developed solutions will also enable scientists to completely automate library preparation protocols for Ion TorrentTM and Roche 454™.

Based on the Microlab STAR line of instruments, Hamilton is developing an “open” NGS workstation that simplifies the setup of any library preparation protocol. The versatile STAR line supports any level of throughput from 8 to 96 samples and reduces time consuming manual pipetting steps and sample-to-sample variability. The initial focus is on automated methods for the NEBNext Ultra™ DNA library prep kit for Illumina sequencers. NEB’s high quality Ultra reagents provide fast, simplified workflows for robust, high-yield library preparation with input amounts from a few nanograms to one microgram of DNA. All protocols incorporate magnetic bead-based size selection for superior ease of use. Additional methods will be added later this year.

“At Hamilton we have a strong focus on and expertise in providing researchers with solutions that exactly fit with a lab’s needs, but we also offer standardized solutions for a wide range of applications. We are very happy to work with NEB as this partnership broadens our NGS portfolio with pre-validated solutions for the most popular sequencing platforms. Through NEB’s established network in the scientific community, we can provide these combined solutions to renowned research institutes worldwide,” says Dr. Mario Arangio, Director, Standard Solutions at Hamilton Robotics.

“With the increased use of NGS comes the need for increased throughput of NGS library preparation. Partnering with Hamilton to automate our NEBNext kits on the Microlab STAR line instruments provides additional options for NGS users to easily scale up their library preparation workflows for a variety of sample types,” says Dr. Fiona Stewart, Product Marketing Manger, Next Generation Sequencing at NEB.