New Microplate Hotel from TAP Biosystems Extends Screening System Support

TAP Biosystems, a leading supplier of innovative cell culture systems and consumables for life science applications, today introduced a new microplate hotel for use with its CompacT SelecT™ automated cell culture system. The new plate hotel is compatible with LiCONiC plate incubators and allows users to transfer entire stacks of plates between the CompacT SelecT and LiCONiC incubator based screening systems, thus saving scientists’ time and improving the efficiency of supplying consistent quality cells to increase throughput in cell-based screening operations.

The new microplate hotel, developed in conjunction with LiCONiC AG, is compatible with their STR incubator range. This ensures researchers can significantly reduce plate transfer times and reduce the risks associated with manual plate relocations. The addition of the new LiCONiC-compatible plate hotel extends the functionality of CompacT SelecT to provide fully automated aseptic cell culture processing for a continuous supply of consistent quality cells, thereby increasing productivity in cell-based screening programs.

Dr Dave Thomas, Product Manager at TAP Biosystems explained: "Our integrated plate incubator on CompacT SelecT has always supported the use of the Kendro-compatible hotels and made the transfer of plates between the CompacT SelecT and Cytomat® incubators a convenient process for our users. Recently, with the choice of cell types and assays increasing, a wider range of screening systems are being used in the screening workflow. Previously, this has meant scientists using LiCONiC incubators on their screening platforms have had to manually unload individual plates from the CompacT SelecT incubator and transfer them to their screening system. This operation of unloading and reloading plates can take up to an hour and there is always a risk of dropping a plate or putting it back incorrectly. With these new LiCONiC-compatible plate hotels, users can now transfer entire hotels between systems in a fraction of the time thereby dramatically increasing the efficiency of the operation.”

Thomas concluded: "For the last decade, TAP’s SelecT and CompacT SelecT systems have been the backbone of cell culture supply operations for screening programs in leading pharma and biotech companies. Our latest development, the new plate hotel, has been designed in response to the ongoing productivity and quality demands of the industry. Scientists that need to achieve reproducible results and increase throughput in their cell-based assay programs should contact us at TAP Biosystems to discuss not only the new plate hotel but also how the CompacT SelecT can lead to improvements in quality and consistency of cell supply in order to achieve optimum screening workflow.”