Eppendorf North America and Akonni Biosystems have agreed to jointly market Akonni's TruTip nucleic acid extraction kits with the Eppendorf epMotion automated pipetting system.
Under the terms of the agreement, Eppendorf, based in Hauppauge, NY, will promote Frederick, Md.-based Akonni's extraction kits to clinical, clinical research, and forensic laboratories in North America.
Akonni's TruTip technology uses a patented nucleic acid-binding matrix inserted into the 1000-µL pipette tip in the epMotion system. Each TruTip kit delivered under the agreement will include a rack of 96- by 1000-µL extraction tips with bulk packaged lysis, wash, and elution buffers, the companies said.
Akonni will initially introduce two high-throughput TruTip kits for use with epMotion: one for isolation of influenza RNA from nasopharyngeal aspirate samples; and another for extracting genomic DNA from saliva.
Akonni said that it plans to develop and supply additional kits for the epMotion platform in the near future.
"We believe the combination of products from both companies has the potential to improve laboratory efficiency by reducing by 10-fold or more the time it takes to obtain PCR-ready nucleic acid, for up to eight simultaneous samples in as few as four minutes," Kevin Banks, vice president of sales and marketing at Akonni, said in a statement.
Andrea Dickstein, Eppendorf North America's director of marketing, added in a statement that combining the products will "increase the productivity of our customers by reducing to mere minutes the time it takes to extract DNA or RNA."