Lunatic by Unchained Labs

"Great so far, we are looking at a cross over study to streamline our work."

"The best small volume protein concentration measurement instrument. Has wide concentration range, so no need for sample dilution which decrease errors."

"- Multiple samples at a time - high throughput - large dynamic range - no need to dilute samples - quick turn around time - access to field application scientist to answer post sales queries"

"Lunatic is an easy to use plate reader. One or multiple plates with microliters per sample could be measured under 15 minutes per plate which saves tremendous amount of time used to be taken by another well known equipment. The accuracy of the readings were so great that only one reading per sample is needed, saving the precious samples for other assays. Salesman Mark could serve as a good tech support when needed, and his responses were always within 24 hours. I wished I got the equipment years earlier."

"Big Lunatic is very easy to use and offers great quality and reproducibility to our samples. In addition 96 samples can be read at the same time, minimizing the hands-on time that we have when measuring samples with, for example, Nanodrop. It was easy to implement at the company and everyone in the lab is using it now! There is no problems with cross-contamination or evaporation. We got value for our money spent on the Big Lunatic and are very happy the we invested in this machine!"

"Dropsense 96 is very easy to use and you get your result fast."

"We determine mainly protein concentrations after purifications in a high throughput manner (200 to 500 samples a week). Data determined with DropSense turned out to be highly reliable and reproducible, while subjecting only 2 to 4 µL to the device plates. Additional value is given by cDrop application protocols which allow for example determination of specific impurity species on your sample background. In this context, Trinean and we developed a special protocol for one of our applications which turned out to be very helpful and was published. The friendly collaboration was a great base of this successful development. I rated value for the money we spent with 4 stars only (not 5), which might be due to the fact that the device definitely is quite expensive in comparison to other devices allowing determination of protein concentration. If our work load will increase and we will need more diverse and more complex analysis than we are apparently are running on DropSense, then it would be worth 5 Stars. "

"The DropSense96 is used for concentration measurement of both antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates at AbbVie. The plate based analysis affords a very high throughput with a 96-well plate measured in less than 10 minutes. Plate preparation is straightforward and done at the same time as plates for HIC and SEC as no dilutions are required. By using the disposable plates there is no cross contamination. Unused locations on a plate can be used in subsequent analyses so it is possible to use the entire plate which keeps running costs down. The system only uses a very small amount of material, 2μL. The software is intuitive and the PC can be networked. It is easy to generate a standard curve to obtain extinction coefficients. Data can be exported in multiple formats including XLS, CSV and TXT."

"We use the Trinean Dropsense96 most of the time with the Hamilton Starlet (pipetrobot). The DNA concentration measurement is automatized what makes it works easy, fast and reliable. After the measurement it is possible to see a profile of the DNA sample. In this profile we can see the gDNA, Nucleic Acids, impurity's and turbidity. This gives us the opportunity to optimize our DNA isolation, or to do purification before starting our experiments. The Trinean Dropsense96 is very stable with a good maintenance every year from the company."

"This is a fantastic tool and QC platform for biobanks. We focus on DNA extraction and pre-analysis QC. We don't perform any downstream analysis ourselves but ship normalized DNA to third party laboratories and therefore we need as much QC information as possible. As a high throughput laboratory, our QC must have both a reasonable analysis price and be quick and easy to use on a variety of samples. This full platform combines the best of both nanodrop and picogreen worlds and can be done with as little as 2µl of sample. The system is very powerful and gives a tremendous amount of data. Software is easy to use but you have to play around with it to learn which buttons to use and which to leave alone to be able get the info you need. There are a lot of parameters and variables so the interface may look a bit chaotic at first. Be aware that the system comes with the DropQuant software and you need the cDROP add-on to be able to get the full features. However, it is very well worth it as this expensive add-on gives you a very powerful software. The results are very comparable to picogreen (dsDNA) results. It also looks like the reliability is very good as I have got nothing but good feedback from our third party laboratories. What initially may feel like a little drawback with such a powerful tool as cDROP is that there is no such thing as one universal software protocol that can be used on all samples. If you want to use the complete set of cDROP features the software needs a kit/source specific protocol. Software comes with a lot of pre-installed protocols but your specific combination of source and kit may not be there. Luckily, the protocol developers at Trinean are very helpful so in the end this is no problem or drawback at all. However, nucleic acids isolated with self-established DNA extraction protocols or so called "quick and dirty" extraction methods may not be optimal for cDROP. This will be something that the protocol developing team will help you with. "

"pros: Measure many samples simultaneously We do not have to wipe out after every measurement as we do for NanoDrop cons: Spend more consumables than the NanoDrop Worn out after I perform many measurements because it is too hard to pick up the plate. It is so useful when we perform a measurement for many samples, but it is unfortunate that we hardly measure so many samples. "

"The Xpose is an easy to use UV/VIS spectrophotometer for DNA, RNA and proteins (we did not use and therefore cannot evaluate) which can handle micro-volume samples of 2ul. 16 samples can be processed together on a special slide.
Advantages over other devices on the market:
- The slide makes it easier to pre-load larger numbers of samples and run them in a batch. - All samples are blanked with water only, no need to have the elution buffer ready.
- Blanks can be stored for 1month so space on the slide can be saved for samples.
- Results are very differentiated: There is information on recognized known impurities, background (like beads) and residues (unknown impurities). And of course all of the other spectral measures are taken (A260/230, A260, A260/A280). This is possible due to a large database (company owned and secret) which can identify many components present in the measurements. In the end one gets not only a single measure for nucleic acid content but a lot more information on other components and quality.
- Results come as spectral profile and column-wise. They can be exported via USB, network, directly to a printer and for the playful researcher a QR code can be created. - Some useful applications are preinstalled (like mammalian or plant DNA, RNA, purified pcr, ssDNA, dsDNA)
- Results are reproducible.
- Xpose runs calibration free.
- Xpose does not need a PC but is a PC (windows based).
- Service provided is excellent.

But of course it can't be all gold:
- The slides costs have to be taken into project calculations (so far about ~20ct/sample)
- All DNA/RNA quantifications give a picture of measurements and are approximations of the real content. Measures taken with different techniques gave different results. We found that it is best to stick with one method.
- Results are stable for concentrations down to about 10ng/ul. Below this the results in our NGS data show increasing variability (in terms of reads per sample).
- PCR cleaning methods can have a strong influence on UV/VIS spectrum and therefore on quantification, e.g. FAST/AP cleaning resulted in heavily overestimated concentrations.
- Like with other measures you need to get a feeling for the data.

But with all that differentiated measures it much easier to find the hints for problematic results. All together we are very satisfied with the Xpose trusting its results more than other UV/VIS spectrophotometers. And it is much easier to obtain results than with fluorescence based or qPCR measures."

"Very easy to use. Filling the 16 positions of a slide can be done by a pipetting robot if you build your own adapter. :)"