Following the success of the Glowell range of luminescent standards, Lux Biotechnology is branching out into fluorescent standards, offering a high quality and versatile range of products
Lux has won a Smart Award to fund the research and development of fluorescent calibration devices.
The focus of the project will be the identification of robust fluorescent materials covering a broad range of colours and intensities.
Lux is working closely with end users in order to create products which fulfil their requirements.
One of the key challenges will be to provide traceable standards that can be integrated into existing high throughput and automated systems.
The project will be completed in February 2007 at which time we expect to launch the product range of calibrated and fully traceable fluorescent standards.
The standards will: (i) Provide unique fluorescent reference standards for a variety of instruments that measure fluorescence e.g microscopes, imagers and plate readers (ii) Offer improved functionality over existing calibration methods (iii) Allow equipment manufacturers and end users to assess machine performance e.g: alignment, excitation, emission, background (iv) Provide a means of comparing and standardising experiments.
Dr Patrick Hickey of Lux, who is leading the development of this product range stated: "Calibration of instruments and standardisation of experiments is incredibly important in both academic and industrial laboratories who wish to comply with good laboratory practice (GLP)".
"Lux has developed a unique range of luminous standards called Glowell which emit a precise amount of light and can be used to calibrate virtually any instrument that measures light e.g microplate readers and CCD cameras".
"Following a successful launch and sales of Glowell luminous devices, our customers have been asking for fluorescent version of the product".
"Luminescence is a "glowing" phenomenon, whereas fluorescence requires "excitation" with a light source (e.g ultraviolet light); both have their own specific qualities and are valuable research tools in science".
"Fluorescent standards will greatly enhance our Glowell range, which meet the high quality and traceability required by today's standards".
"We expect the fluorescent Glowell range to be accepted by the industry as the benchmark to standardisation of experiments".
How bright is your experiment?.
There is a distinct lack of traceable standards with which to compare biological samples.
Results can be highly variable between laboratories.
The routine publication of standardised data will enable researchers to obtain reproducible results, and provides a strong benchmark for comparison.
A problem with current techniques for standardising fluorescence is that they are labour intensive, and are generally carried out infrequently.
Lux standards are being designed to be traceable, to be used every day and will have long lifetime typically over one year.
