Taking the Strain out of Cancer Diagnostics

Rainin electronic pipettes are helping California-based Clarient Diagnostic Services, Inc. to provide cancer diagnostic testing. Flow cytometry supervisor Brian Ngo explained: “Our laboratory uses flow cytometry to detect specific biomarkers that help to diagnose leukaemia, and this involves pipetting microliter volumes of antibodies and samples. When you are doing a lot of pipetting, user comfort is very important and so we decided to invest in electronic – rather than manual – pipettes.”

“We looked at the various options available, and chose Rainin E4 XLS single channel pipettes because they are ergonomically designed and very easy to hold. They are also quite intuitive to use – changing the volume is very straightforward – with the benefit of a large LCD screen. There are advantages from a GLP perspective too, as the programmed volume ranges can be password protected – preventing them from being inadvertently altered – and particular features locked down or hidden. The pipettes are very dependable and, as they can operate accurately over a range of volumes – unlike the manual pipettes we were using before – we have been able to reduce the number of pipettes in the lab from over 100 to about 10, significantly decreasing our calibration costs.”