ASSIST PLUS increases reproducibility of detection assays, according to researchers from the Ohio State University

Researchers in the Hadad Research Group – based within the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry – at the Ohio State University are focused on studying organophosphate pesticides in vitro. The group is using INTEGRA’s ASSIST PLUS pipetting robot to streamline workflows and enhance the reproducibility of results.

Stacey Allen, a graduate student in the lab, explained: “We are working on developing treatments to reverse acetylcholinesterase inhibition caused by pesticides or nerve agents, as well as exploring new ways of protecting people against exposure to these chemicals.”

“We mainly use the ASSIST PLUS to automate the process of preparing our plates for incubation, pipetting all of our negative controls and a variety of compounds into the plates and then performing a mixing step. We also use the robot for our detection assays, where we use it to pipette samples out of the incubated plate and into another, before they are put in a plate reader. We were originally doing everything manually, but it was exhausting, and the risk of developing repetitive strain injuries was high. Not only that, but there was quite a lot of human error and variation in results, especially between different operators. The ASSIST PLUS has been great for our work – our results are much more reproducible, errors are less frequent and it saves us a lot of time. It has been so easy to train people to use the robot, and the software is very user friendly and intuitive. You can even perform a final check of your program using the simulation feature, which is great to ensure that you’ve got everything right before putting it into practice,” concluded Stacey.

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