GE Healthcare Life Sciences Launches New Amersham™ WB System for Reproducible and Quantitative Protein Analysis

GE Healthcare Life Sciences has launched the Amersham WB system, a fully integrated system for quantitative SDS-PAGE and Western blotting of proteins using fluorescence detection. Developed by scientists at GE Healthcare’s Centre of Excellence in Protein Science in Uppsala, Sweden, the Amersham WB system is designed to drive down the variability seen with conventional Western blotting. With the Amersham WB system, every stage of the Western blotting process, including electrophoresis, transfer, probing and scanning, is standardized and monitored – resulting in consistent, quantitative protein analysis.

Eric Roman, General Manager of Research & Applied Markets, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, commented: “Every life scientist has probably carried out a Western blot at some time in their career, and tens of thousands still do every week. The value of the insights provided by Western blotting has kept it relevant for more than 30 years, but its shortcomings are well-recognized. Building on GE’s heritage and expertise in protein analysis, what we have developed is a system that is set to shift how scientists see and use Western blotting from now on, with a clear focus on reliability and quantification of results, regardless of user.”

Established as a key laboratory technique for over 30 years, Western blotting requires a complex combination of analytical knowledge, extensive manual handling, dexterity and strict adherence to protocols in order to achieve reliable results. Failure rates, however, can be high and data variations between different users can be as high as 35-40%(1). To address this shortfall in consistency, GE Healthcare Life Sciences has developed Amersham WB system, with a standardized traditional Western blotting workflow that typically achieves a variability of less than 10% between users(2). The system’s consistency and reproducibility delivers the robust quantitative data necessary to help scientists increase their understanding of diseases and support the development of new therapies.

Martin Teichert, Research Scientist at DKFZ (German Cancer Research Center), Heidelberg, Germany said, “The publication landscape has changed dramatically over the past year, and the need for quantified blots and data is of significant importance for peer-reviewed journals. I think that the Amersham WB system fits perfectly into this niche, and solves this problem of having quantifiable data that can be relied upon. It has arrived at just the right time.”

GE Healthcare Life Sciences’ expertise in protein purification and protein analysis stretches back over 50 years. The company’s flagship technologies such as HiTrap™ purification media and columns, membranes, ÄKTA™ and Biacore™ are used in laboratories all over the world to support biomedical and life science research.

1. Harding, Ann. Not Your PI’s Western Blot. Science, 1 March, http://www.sciencemag.org/site/products/lst_20130301.pdf.
2. GE reproducibility data to be presented as a poster at ComBio2014, Canberra, from 28 September to 2 October, 2014.