Technology enables samples to be picked up from 96 or 384 well plates and then printed in arrays ranging from a few spots in a high density format to slides containing 43,000 elements or more
Arrayjet reports that a European patent has been granted for 'Fabrication of microarrays by inkjet printheads'.
Used inside the company's Aj100 and Aj120 microarrayers, this technology enables samples to be picked up from 96 or 384 well plates and then printed in arrays ranging from a few spots in a high density format to slides containing 43,000 elements or more.
Most people will be familiar with the technology through use of inkjet printers in their daily routine.
"The tricky part was getting a number of biological samples into the print head while keeping them separate", said Howard Manning, founder and technical director of Arrayjet.
"We then let the print head take over and do what it has been designed to do.
"That is producing rows of uniform and consistent spots.
"Our current users describe manufacturing the most beautiful arrays".
With its core technology now officially recognised, Arrayjet is talking to other manufacturers about compatible applications outside of microarray technology, and are also considering new variants of its current instruments.
Duncan Hall, director of sales and marketing, commented: "Non contact printing has clear promise for current and up and coming applications such as diagnostic microarrays.
"Dispensing on-the-fly without contact enables Arrayjet instruments not only to produce very high quality microarrays, but also to produce them at speeds required for the throughput demands of diagnostic microarray producers".
Arrayjet was founded in August 2000 by physicist Howard Manning (University of Cambridge), and molecular biologists Peter Ghazal and Douglas Roy (University of Edinburgh), to develop biological microarrays robotics using inkjet print-heads.
In February 2001 Arrayjet secured two-stage funding from the Scotland based investor group Archangels and won a Scottish Enterprise Smart award.
Manning is Arrayjet's technical director and Keith Howell, an Edinburgh based director and consultant, is acting chairman.
Ghazal is chief scientific advisor and Roy is lead advisor on microarrays.
The position of CEO has recently been taken up by Graham Miller, formerly of PerkinElmer.
Five engineers have been recruited.
Premises are located close to Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh Medical School.
The Aj100/Aj120 microarrayers have over 100 nozzles and produces microarrays of very high quality, with excellent morphology, uniformity, consistency and robustness, says the company.
The extra nozzles also give an additional advantage in that there is redundancy in the print-head - it carries spare capacity on every print run.
Academic and commercial researchers will benefit equally from the careful design and ingenuity of the Aj100, since standard pin-based microarray spotters often produce differentiation in print quality; those producing their own arrays will no longer have quadrants of the chip that have higher densities of macromolecules than others.
