Developing New Molecular Tools for the Fight Against Hospital-associated Infections

A Freedom EVO® workstation with an integrated HydroSpeed™ plate washer and Infinite® F200 PRO multimode reader is helping researchers at Jikei University School of Medicine to perform high throughput compound screening in the battle to combat persistent bacterial infections.

Dr Ken-ichi Okuda, Assistant Professor in the Department of Bacteriology at Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan, explained: “Bacteria within biofilms have a low susceptibility to the immune system and antibiotics, which means that infection is more difficult to eradicate in many cases. Our objective is to find compounds that prevent formation of the biofilms, and then to analyze the detailed composition of the molecular interactions of these compounds with the bacteria.”

“We perform large scale compound screening to identify inhibitory compounds, assaying around 10,000 different conditions each month. The Freedom EVO workstation, with its integrated HydroSpeed washer and Infinite reader, provides us with a continuous automated operation; the only manual handling tasks are the preparation of the bacterial culture and the set-up of the compound plates. The Freedom EVO’s strength is its high scalability to fit experimental needs, which has enabled us to build a system that fulfills our exact requirements. We start in the afternoon, analyze the data the following morning, and are able to use our time far more effectively.”