RTS Introduces SmaRTScreen

OVER the last five years, the RTS Life Science Assay Platform has become a highly respected, market leading system in High Throughput Screening. However, customer feedback has revealed a need for a smaller, standardised, lower cost version with much shorter lead times.

David Harding, technical director for RTS, and part of the original team behind Assay Platform, explained: “Our customer feedback has shown that many pharma departments, particularly early ADMETox, Assay Development and Lead Optimisation, need a simple, compact, flexible automated alternative to manual assaying. SmaRTScreen delivers this and thanks to our versatile Sprint scheduling software, it can also offer plate replication and small scale cell culturing.”

Sprint not only future-proofs SmaRTScreen by allowing instruments to be replaced as they are superseded, but sub groups of instruments can be created, allowing specific instruments to be chosen for an allotted task, greatly enhancing its flexibility. All of the ‘full’ Assay Platform functionality is preserved, giving the user big system performance and for a small system price and lead-time.

Although the system has not been formally launched, such is the interest in the smaller sibling of the Assay Platform, that one has already been sold and there are several more sales in the pipeline. Like its bespoke counterpart, SmaRTScreen will feature three distinct functions: storage and incubation, liquid handling and plate reading. However the instruments in SmaRTScreen are typically served by a smaller robot, typically a Staubli TX40, as a result, the entire system footprint can be as low as 2m².

Phil Eeles, business unit manager – Platform Solutions, said: “Thanks to Sprint, we can offer our customers tremendous flexibility, because we can add more instruments and easily shift them around within a compact table top arrangement. We are able to offer a 50% reduction in our standard lead time and SmaRTScreen costs just 60-70% the price of the Assay Platform, depending on the instruments chosen.”

A typical SmaRTScreen configuration features a storage device, a liquid or reagent dispenser, a transfer device or liquid handler, some waste bins and a small reader. If a larger reader, like a FLIPR Tetra is required, this can be docked onto the System externally.