Fluidigm Europe Releases New Access Array - An Integrated Fluidic Circuit (IFC)

Fluidigm Europe has announced a new integrated fluidic circuit (IFC) - called the Access Array - specifically designed to support high-throughput re-sequencing, targeted enrichment, sample barcoding, and library preparation for sequencing using amplicon tagging. The Access Array IFC complements Fluidigm's SlingShot™ Sample Quantitation Kit that together provide researchers with a complete front-end Next-Gen Library preparation solution.

Fluidigm's new Access Array is the first IFC that features the ability to harvest the sample out of the chip.  Once the sample processing has been completed in the chip it automatically returns the sample to the inlets where they can be easily extracted and placed into a quantitation step and readied for sequencing.

Fluidigm also announced an Early Access Program For Access Arrays where researchers can submit a proposal describing how the new chip would help their next-generation library sample preparation efforts. Winners will have Fluidigm "do the work for them" for free.

"Next-generation sequencing is one of the "hottest" areas in life sciences, but it is plagued with cumbersome sample preparation procedures, long cycles and costly experiments.   The Access Array is our fourth integrated fluidic circuit product line. It continues to build our portfolio of enabling solutions to simplify front-end preparation and expand the applications space of next-gen sequencers," said Gajus Worthington, Fluidigm president and chief executive officer.

The Access Array System, which consists of IFCs, instruments and software, is the first IFC product that allows next-generation sequencing users to automatically prepare their libraries and tag them with unique barcodes to allow multiplex sequencing. In addition, targeted re-sequencing (using target enrichment) has become important as researchers look at specific regions in large cohort studies. Up-to-now, large sample studies have been too expensive and labor-intensive to be performed on next generation sequencers effectively and efficiently. Fluidigm's Access Array System allows researchers to target specific areas of interest to be enriched and barcoded so that a large number of samples can be sequenced at the same time.

Fluidigm's new Access Array IFC can process 48 samples against 48 amplicons (primer pairs) providing 2,304 independent reactions at a time. Only six steps are required to get the results from these thousands of experiments. Because of the Access Array chip's ultra-tiny microfluidic reaction chambers the chip minimises reagent consumption and costs. Operator time is reduced six-fold when compared with conventional methods.