chipCAL: microlitre flow calorimetry for rapid enzyme screening and optimisation by SPT Labtech

TTP Labtech’s chipCAL, is a low cost, microlitre, flow calorimeter which offers to significantly enhance the enzyme discovery and optimisation process. chipCAL's throughput enables characterisation of enzyme activitiy to be achieved within 2-10 minutes per sample.

Employing TTP Labtech’s innovative flow technology where enzyme and substrate are passed together through a thermodymanic cell simultaneously, chipCAL detects thermodynamic changes using volumes as low as 15µL thus reducing reagent and sample usage. This technology provides the additional benefit of non-contact, label free, sample monitoring and its fast throughput enables characterisation of enzyme activity to be achieved within 2-10 minutes per sample. Following analysis, samples are simply passed through to a waste unit and a new sample loaded, often without the need for a laborious wash stage.

This technology has potential for high throughput enzyme screening, being capable of analysing up to 60 samples in an 8 hour working day, thus opening the doors to high throughput enzyme screening.

chipCAL is very easy to use. It has a wide working temperature range of between 15-60°C, allowing a broad range of biological activities to be analysed. Making it suitable for the monitoring of a range of processes in the biopharma, food and fermentation industries.