Caliper Life Sciences and DiscoveRx this week announced the commercial availability of PathHunter eXpress β-arrestin kits for use with Caliper's LabChip 3000 and EZ Reader platforms to conduct cellular G protein-coupled receptor assays.
The launch is part of the collaboration between Caliper and DiscoveRx announced in May 2008 to provide a comprehensive suite of solutions for pharmaceutical and biotech researchers (see CBA News, 5/9/08).
Caliper's LabChip 3000 and EZ Reader platforms use microfluidic separation and direct detection of both substrates and products to generate high-quality, reproducible data to qualify potential lead candidates, the company said.
Thermo Fisher Scientific this week introduced its Thermo Scientific Nunc EasyFill Cell Factory, a multi-layer system for production-scale cell culture.
The Nunc EasyFill Cell Factory features two options for filling and harvesting. The traditional port enables aseptic filling through tubing connections while the large port facilitates the pouring of media directly into the Cell Factory system. The dual port design supports process transfer and scale up, from research applications through commercial production.
The Cell Factory is designed as a single-use certified sterile system that eliminates the need for steam sterilization and its associated cleaning validations, according to the manufacturer. In addition, the multilayer design provides more surface area in a smaller footprint, reducing manual handling in addition to reducing the risk of contamination associated with multiple feeding and seeding interventions common with traditional cell culture flasks. Cell Factories exhibit the same growth kinetics as traditional cell culture platforms, such as cell culture flasks.
The Nunc EasyFill Cell Factory is available in 1-, 2-, 4-, and 10-layer formats, and is a linearly scalable device, to facilitate process scale up.