Presentation: 4C01

SpinX Technologies, founded by scientists from CERN, has developed a unique microfluidic assay system that is designed to fit within the existing infrastructure of drug discovery laboratories. Thanks to the microtitre plate format, standard liquid handling stations are used to fill the microfluidic reservoirs, thus avoiding manual operations or plate to chip interfaces. The system's unique feature is that the microfluidic channels are connected on the fly based on the assay protocol. This flexibility allows a wide variety of assay protocols, including serial dilutions for IC₅₀ curves, to be run unattended as on-chip assays. Once the assay protocol and profiling strategy are defined by the user and the assay components added using conventional liquid handling, the system performs all further operations, running unattended through dilution of compounds and reagents, combination of different compounds with reagents from different assays, individual assay incubation times, and the fluorescence-based readout of the assay. Assays are performed in a closed system, with final volumes in the 200 nl range. The underlying 'programmable microfluidics' technology is applicable to a broad variety of bioassays, though the presentation will focus on our current work with kinase assays using fluorescence polarization readout.

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