We are looking at a system that would allow us to isolate serum from centrifuged blood samples. In my company, the animal lab facilities are generating a huge amount of samples (mice, rodents) and technicians spend hours getting the maximum volume of serum from them.
The process is to use BD microtainer of vacutainer tubes and centrifuge them to then manually get the maximum amount of serum and transfer them to a DW or matrix tubes. We usually have a total volume of 500µL of blood and take 200-250µL of serum (obviously it’s sample dependant).
We’ve seen some systems as the easyblood by Hamilton, but we are not sure it will work with our tubes, nor have we heard from other groups using it.
So my question is : has anyone encountered the same project and found some solutions ? Or do you have advice around that topic ?
I’d be glad to hear from the forum, i’ve seen some amazing ideas on other subjects already :).
Besides the easyBlood platform that uses imaging technology, Hamilton also has options for using pressure-based monitoring to differentiate between the layers. The advantage of the latter approach is that it could be adapted to other tube types.
I recommend you get in touch with your local sales team to see if our solutions can assist with your specific needs. If you don’t know who they are, feel free to message me directly and I can get you in touch with the right person!
I’ve worked with the Tecan EVO and Fluent to perform isolations.
I used a TIU module (laser based) which was super reliable (clinic labeling agnostic) but they moved away from it. I also used an image based setup which was actually made by SciRbotics. I believe Tecan also has a phase/pressure monitoring on the Fluent, it’s also on the EVO and has been for a minute now as well.
I will say that SciRobotics makes some really cool stuff and you can envision pairing their products with a cheaper liquid handler to really get more out of your dollars.
Thank you for your responses. @EricSindelar_Hamilton have you already applied the TADM solution for some clients ? Our local engineer tried it once, but it wasn’t very convincing. We had a lot of volume lost, because the approach was to pipette until the system detects a clogging, at which point we were loosing all the volume in the tip. If you have some examples of implementation or a specialist in the US it would be great to have a second look. @luisvillaautomata the image based setup looks very promising. Do you know if they integrate similar things with Hamilton ? Most of our platforms are Hamiltons now. I’ll send an email to scirobotics to see what they have.
Yes, we have implemented it for plasma isolation (no buffy coat or RBC harvesting) at a client site. This was validated for use in a clinical diagnostic lab where it was critical that there was no buffy coat contamination. It has been in successful use now for over 5 years. I am aware of other setups as well, but I don’t know the status beyond initial proof of function. I understand this approach is being further developed as part of the next iteration of the easyBlood platform.
To add to what @EricSindelar_Hamilton suggested. I used to work Hamilton Field Apps a lifetime ago and deployed one of the first EasyBlood systems at a large BioRepositiory. The advantage of the easyBlood platform is throughput. The system loads tube racks from right to left, scanning each rack of tubes with a camera above the 45 degree mirror carrier. Doing so it is able to quickly determine the fraction level of each tube. The system may have improved since I worked with it a decade ago but at the time we were able to separate serum, buffy coat (with great recovery using offsets), and whole blood.
this sounds an interesting request - most fractionation systems are utilized for much larger tubes & thus are optimized for these geometries,
both Tecan’s defunct TIU system & Hamilton’s EasyBlood are well established for handling 13mm & 16mm diameter tubes with sample volumes > 6 mL,
based on your use for rodent based work, and the micro-sampling tubes - i would think that Tecan’s solution using SciRobotic’ integrated Tube EyeX might be the most flexible option as it allows for individual tube manipulation for barcode scanning, image capture of each specimen (with continuous rotation) and image analysis to calculate the volume of serum/plasma available
i work with labs performing thousands of serum/plasma isolations each day from 16 mm tubes, and switching to an image based system has been awesome - yielding more reliability and less errors
plus - it wouldn’t need to be a dedicated system - fractionation could be a portion of it’s use allowing other groups to utilize the automated pipetting for other tasks
i would be happy to discuss more per your specific requirements
