Nanotechnology Now - Press Release: Fully automated DNA lab-on-a-chip microfluidic system wins Dolomite’s Productizing Science® competition 2013

Home > Press > Fully automated DNA lab-on-a-chip microfluidic system wins Dolomite’s Productizing Science® competition 2013

Abstract:
Dolomite have announced the winner of their 2013 Productizing Science® competition as Molbot Pte. Ltd. The company submitted the concept of a low-cost bench-top molecular biology "Minilab" for automating molecular biology applications.

Fully automated DNA lab-on-a-chip microfluidic system wins Dolomite’s Productizing Science® competition 2013

Royston, UK | Posted on June 10th, 2014

Dolomite's Productizing Science® Competition seeks to find innovative microfluidic concepts and give the winner the chance to develop theirs into a commercially successful product and share in the rewards. Molbot's molecular biology workstation Minilab will utilize microfluidic technology to take traditional sequential manipulations such as PCR assembly, thermal cycling, analysis and purification and perform them ‘on chip' in an automated way. The concept is to integrate traditional ‘stand-alone' systems such as imaging, PCR, centrifuge, electrophoresis and pipetting and combine them into one automated system.

The product will be the machine, which will be used with disposable labs-on-chips, different types of which will represent different applications and will be automatically identified by the machine. Users will load the microfluidic chip and necessary reagents in the machine and the Minilab will execute the required functions for the task, meaning that user input is kept to an absolute minimum. The main appeal of the Minilab is that it will be considerably cheaper than existing technology-driven specialist microfluidic products. Focused more on user needs, it will be a product that is useful and attainable for many biology laboratories.

Dolomite were impressed with Molbot's user-friendly and user-focused concept and saw the benefits it would provide to a number of applications such as DNA testing, genotyping, DNA purification and especially plasmid DNA cloning. The latter involves stitching two pieces of DNA strands together to make a new gene combination, which is an important, time- consuming and often failure-prone task. The automated nature of the Minilab minimises the need for user interaction, which not only saves time but also reduces the risk of failure.

Working with Molbot, Dolomite's engineering expertise and knowledge and understanding of microfluidic droplet technologies will take their winning concept into a productized commercial solution which will be available to buy from Dolomite's microfluidic webshop.

Notable runner-ups were Amar Basu of Wayne State University, US, who came up with a software/hardware solution for measuring and controlling droplet size in real time and also Michele Zagnoni, of the University of Strathclyde, UK, who designed a reusable and semi- automated microfluidic architecture for ion channel drug screening. While the Productizing Science® competition can only have one winner, both runner-ups had concepts worthy of future discussion with Dolomite.

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About The Dolomite Centre Limited
Established in 2005 as the world’s first Microfluidic Application Centre, Dolomite focused on working with customers to turn their concepts for microfluidic applications into reality. Today, Dolomite is the world leader in solving microfluidic problems. With offices in the UK and US and distributors throughout the rest of the world, its clients range from universities developing leading-edge analytical equipment, to manufacturers of chemical, life sciences and clinical diagnostics systems.

Dolomite is pioneering the use of microfluidic devices for small-scale fluid control and analysis, enabling manufacturers to develop more compact, cost-effective and powerful instruments. By combining specialist glass, quartz and ceramic technologies with knowledge of high performance microfluidics, Dolomite is able to provide solutions for a broad range of application areas including environmental monitoring, clinical diagnostics, food and beverage, nuclear, agriculture, petrochemical, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Furthermore Dolomite's in-house micro-fabrication facilities that include clean rooms and precision glass processing facilities allow to prototype and test all solutions rapidly which ensures a faster development cycle and reduces the time to market.

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Contacts:
The Dolomite Centre Ltd
1 Anglian Business Park, Orchard Road, Royston, Hertfordshire, SG8 5TW, UK
T: +44 (0)1763 242491
F: +44 (0)1763 246125

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