New System Automates Nucleic Acid Extraction from FFPE Tissue Samples

Beckman Coulter introduces the Agencourt^® FormaPure™ system, for fast extraction of DNA and RNA from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples.

Time-consuming and laborious nucleic acid extraction procedures have been a roadblock to the study of millions of FFPE samples currently archived at research facilities and cancer centres. The Agencourt FormaPure system can be automated on the Beckman Coulter Biomek^® NX Span-8 Laboratory Automation Workstation to process 96 samples in just four hours (including the paraffin digestion step), with significantly higher yields than other methods. Agencourt FormaPure incorporates the patented Agencourt SPRI^® (Solid Phase Reversible Immobilization) paramagnetic bead-based nucleic acid purification technology, and does not require organic solvents, vacuum filtration or centrifugation steps. This scalable system enables the researcher to process a few to hundreds of samples per day.

“The new, automation-ready Agencourt FormaPure process allows researchers to unlock large stores of valuable samples for important genetic and disease studies,” commented Erik Gustafson, Ph.D., Director of Research and Development for Agencourt. “Research centres have been reluctant to use these archived samples due to the daunting manual extraction methods that were available. Agencourt FormaPure completely removes that bottleneck, enabling a look at trends across large populations and thousands of samples.”