For example, the initial shift from tubes storing compounds in 96 and 384 racks is already well underway. But at the 384-well scale - which uses tiny tubes containing microlitre amounts of liquid - conventional approaches such as bar-coding become unreliable.
Absolute Vision, based in announced earlier this year that it would launch the system capable of reading two-dimensional data matrix codes - made from a series of dots in a tiny grid - at the Lab Automation Europe/International Biotech meeting in London this week. At the meeting, DrugResearcher.com spoke to one of the founders of the company, Richard Laight, to discuss the new product.
The development of the reader was stimulated by the launches earlier this year of storage tubes from Abgene and The Automation Partnership designed to fit into 384 racks. These single-use tubes eliminate the risk of compound degradation arising from multiple freeze-thaw cycles, which can occur with a more conventional storage tube.
These tubes carry a 2D code on the base of the tube that can be read using Absolute Vision's new product and provides a unique identifier of reach tube. These codes are not prone to becoming unreadable and cannot fall off, even after several years in storage. And 2D codes are very reliable, with studies suggesting that a misread occurs less than once every 10.5 million reads.
Laight said that Absolute Vision's new reader is in some respects ahead of the market for 384-rack storage, as this standard has yet to be adopted by all except the most up-to-date pharmaceutical companies.
He also maintains that his company has an advantage over its rivals in the sector. The only other significant player looking at using 2D data matrix technologies in the compound storage setting is a US company called RVSI, he noted, and its technology does not have the resolution to cope with the leap from the 96 to 384 format, according to Laight.