First French Pharma to Fully Automate Cell Culture Chooses CompacT SelecT™ from The Automation Partnership

The Automation Partnership (TAP), a world leading manufacturer of innovative industrial automation for life science applications, is pleased to announce that Laboratoires Fournier S.A., a French subsidiary of the international chemical and pharmaceutical group Solvay S.A., has chosen a CompacT SelecT™, automated cell culture system to increase the productivity of their cell line maintenance and cell-based screening activities.

The CompacT SelecT is a smaller and more affordable version of TAP’s internationally successful high throughput SelecT™ system. The system at Laboratoires Fournier S.A. will be the first fully automated cell culture system installed in a pharmaceutical company operating in France.

CompacT SelecT manages the entire cell culture process from growing and maintaining cells in T-flasks to delivering cells in assay-ready plates. It uses a 6-axis anthropomorphic robotic arm to process up to 130 T-175 flasks and 210 microplates and bar code tracking to ensure cell line security and traceability. Ultimately, it offers a level of flexibility and processing power previously unavailable to medium throughput laboratories and has the potential to increase cell culture productivity by more than 20 per cent.

Tim Ward, Cell Culture Business Unit Director at TAP commented: “We are delighted that the CompacT SelecT is going to be the first fully automated cell culture system installed in a French pharma. This is the sixth CompacT SelecT system we have sold world-wide and shows that for forward thinking, growing pharmas and biotechs wanting to significantly increase their cell culture productivity, having a CompacT SelecT is rapidly becoming an essential investment.”