​Exiqon Services is investing in a new “NGS Illumina STAR” from Hamilton Nordic AB

Focusing on high throughput and high quality in liquid handling

Exiqon AS and Hamilton Nordic AB have a long lasting collaboration with implementation of several liquid handling solutions. In the spring of 2016 the service department at Exiqon decided to expand the automated workflow by investing in a “NGS Illumina STAR” to further increase the capacity and optimize the performance in the workflow. Exiqon Services is a sample-to-answer-solution provider and their routine workflow includes NGS, isolation of RNA, qPCR profiling and extensive data analysis. With the latest investment Hamilton automation is now involved in all major workflow’s in the service department. The key drivers for the investment in new automation were increasing throughput, high quality liquid handling and pre-programmed methods ready to go and qualified by Illumina.

Following an extensive evaluation process Hamilton Robotics was awarded the contract to supply an “NGS Illumina STAR” to the service department. The system will be installed and implemented during summer 2016 and will be part of the routine workflow.

The NGS STAR for Illumina Library Prep

Hamilton has partnered with Illumina, Inc. to automate a variety of Illumina library preparation kits. The Hamilton Microlab STAR workstation is a medium- to high-throughput system that can be configured to run Illumina-qualified protocols. Illumina-qualified means the analysis has shown the libraries prepared on the automated system perform comparably to those prepared manually.

Through an interactive run settings dialog, the user has the option of customizing each run. This customization allows the user to select desired starting and stopping points for the major processes in the Illumina protocol. For easy deck setup, the graphical user Interface gives the user a complete list of the resources needed for the run (calculated according to the user’s custom selections).

The Hamilton system provides fully traceable runs that can be used for process and library tracking.

Christian Glue, Director Exiqon Services, Comment’s:

“To further increase capacity and performance of the liquid handling processes involved in the NGS library prep, we decided to add a Hamilton liquid handling robot to the workflow

As a business crucial operation, we feel confident that Hamilton is the right partner to work with. During the years, Hamilton has proven to deliver excellent quality and a very strong support structure.

It is the goal to increase the daily production, while keeping performance at high quality.”

About Exiqon

Exiqon operates in two business areas, Life Sciences and Diagnostics:

Exiqon Life Sciences is a leading supplier of products for microRNA research. Researchers around the world in academia, the biotechnology industry and the pharmaceutical industry are using our research products to make groundbreaking discoveries about the correlation between gene activity and the development of cancer and other diseases.

Exiqon Services is part of Exiqon Life Sciences and provides sample-to-answer-solutions including NGS, isolation of RNA, qPCR profiling and extensive data analysis to customers within the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry as well as customers from universities and hospitals.

Exiqon Diagnostics develops novel molecular diagnostic tests in collaboration with pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies. The unique value proposition of Exiqon Diagnostics is our ability to leverage the huge potential of microRNAs as a novel group of biomarkers with our proprietary LNA™ detection technology.