Austrian tools vendor Tecan announced this week that Arizona State University researchers have acquired one of its hybridization systems and two of its scanners for the purpose of processing protein microarrays.
The HS 4800 Pro automated hyb station and two of Tecan's PowerScanner units were placed in the Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics at ASU's Biodesign Institute. Joshua LaBaer, director of the center, said in a statement that the instruments will be used to synthesize proteins for analysis.
According to LaBaer, the center's approach involves printing the genes for the desired proteins on slides and then adding a cell-free extract that synthesizes the proteins in situ. "The proteins are made literally an hour before we test them," LaBaer said.
He described the Tecan additions as "real workhorses," as the HS 4800 Pro allows the center's researchers to "produce proteins in situ on the glass, wash them off, and even incubate them with samples, all in a single run, without any manual intervention at all." He added that ASU selected the PowerScanners because of their "combination of good autoloading features, images and software."
Tecan has been active in the proteomics arena in recent years. Last October, the company inked a co-marketing agreement with Berlin-based JPT Peptide Technologies. Under that agreement, Tecan and JPT will market JPT's PepStar catalog peptide arrays and services alongside Tecan's HS 4800 Pro and HS 400 Pro automated array hybridization stations (BAN 10/2/2012).
And in June 2011, Tecan announced that it had developed a sample preparation system in collaboration with the Translational Genomics Research Institute and the Biodesign Institute at ASU for proteomic biomarker discovery and validation.
Company representatives have told BioArray News in the past that protein array users represent its largest customer segment (BAN 6/1/2010).