Illumina's just announced a partnership with major automation vendors so their s-bot looks like it has been killed as a project. We've got a Tecan Evo in our lab and would like to use it for library prep but a major headache has been the rapid development of library prep methods. There just does not seem time to program and validate a method before the next one comes out.
Having the likes of Beckman Coulter, Eppendorf, Hamilton, PerkinElmer, and Tecan working on protocols for their own kit should allow many more of us access to high-throughput library prep.
I'll be waiting for our Tecan rep to get in touch.
I'll also be insterested to find out who's picking up the tab when the libraries are rubbish!
We also just purchased two Freedom Evo Systems. The difficult thing for Tecan is that their systems are so customizable. If one wants a jointly validated protocol that will not produce rubbish libraries, then the system or configuration has to be "locked-down" in a way that might prohibit other important features a unique core may deem necessary. Vendors also like to bump up the price of these systems to sell a product instead of selling a machine of components.
ReplyDeleteInactivating features and reducing flexibility sort of goes against the principle of purchasing this sort of hardware that is supposed to grow with your processes - at least for a few years.
I'm excited to see what these methods will look like on the tecan systems, but am somewhat apprehensive depending on how they roll it out.
Your this blog giving us information about subjected topic. Thanks for doing this
ReplyDeleteaccess Rapid Library in UK