Japan Tobacco's pharmaceutical research and discovery team turns to Tecan and Remp for automated sample management
Japan Tobacco's drug discovery team turns to Tecan and Remp for automated sample management.
Pharmaceutical research scientists at Japan Tobacco (JT) have two Genesis RWS workstations from Tecan, one equipped with a Remp tube punching module (TPM), for discovery of 'seed' compounds with specific or unique pharmaceutical effects on potential target molecules such as enzymes and receptors.
Twenty or thirty seed compounds are eventually selected from hundreds of thousands of compounds that are routinely investigated for potential therapeutic use in areas such as diabetes, immunology, viral diseases and bone disorders.
Akira Ohta, senior researcher at JT, explained: "The Genesis/TPM system is extremely simple to use and one person can easily control the process.
"Remp's 384 tube technology was straightforward to integrate into our workflow and the system helps to minimise the absorption of moisture during cherry picking, improving the quality of the compound solution and virtually eliminating loss of compound activity during the evaluation steps.
"It can pick as many as 700 tubes in an hour and the automated barcoding system removes the inevitable risk of human error that would be associated with handling this kind of throughput manually."
