SAW Instruments Launches sam®X Acoustic Biosensor in US
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SAW Instruments has launched the sam®X acoustic biosensor in North America at the IBC Antibody Engineering and Antibody Therapeutics (AEAT) meeting in San Diego, CA, USA (4-8 December 2011).
sam®X is the latest high-end addition to the sam® range of acoustic biosensors, featuring eight analysis channels and adaptable microfluidic routing that expands the capabilities for studying real-time kinetics on the surfaces of live mammalian cells.
The new system uses SAW Instruments’ proven proprietary Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) technology, which can detect both mass binding events and protein conformational changes, and represents a step-change in biosensor technology and applications.
Unlike other cell-based detection platforms, SAW Instruments’ range of sam® acoustic biosensors do not require any fluorescent labelling, are real-time rather than steady-state, and can use unfixed cells adhered to the sensor surface or in suspension, all while providing rapid analysis in the order of only a few minutes.
The new sam®X offers increased throughput with two sensor chips, rather than the single chip of the sam®5 models, which increases the number of channels to eight.
Using sophisticated fluidics, each channel can now be utilized independently (8 x 1) or via sequential combinations of 4 x 2, 2 x 4, or 1 x 8 channels. This optimizes user workflow, allowing discrete or common reagents to be delivered to particular sensor chip positions.
In addition, different ligands can now be immobilized on-line at each chip position automatically, without the need for time-consuming, off-line protein loading.
This approach is important for directly quantifying the amount of protein bound to the sensor chip surface, giving even more accurate and reliable results.
Dr Markus Perpeet, Managing Director of SAW Instruments, commented: “We are very excited to introduce North American scientists to the sam®X, which further opens up new potential applications for biosensors, the type of which are way beyond what was previously possible with SPR. The new system facilitates more complex assay design and can be easily adapted to meet the needs of each user, while increasing throughput speed and accuracy. It is particularly well suited to measuring binding constants and kinetics for proteins on whole mammalian cells. It could also be used to investigate relative antibody accessibility to native membrane protein structures via assessment of the kon kinetics data provided using SAW technology. Importantly, results are obtained significantly faster than when using equilibrium-based methods.”
SAW Instruments are exhibiting at AEAT booth #212 and are also presenting a poster, entitled “Binding Kinetics of Therapeutic Antibodies to Native Proteins on Living Cells”.
