Beckman Coulter And Harvard Medical School - Partners HealthCare Center For Genetics And Genomics Announce Deployment Of New Automated Microarray Sample Preparation System

Beckman Coulter, Inc., announced today that it has entered into a cooperative purchase agreement with the Harvard Medical School-Partners HealthCare Center for Genetics and Genomics (HPCGG) for an automated microarray sample preparation system for large-scale gene expression and genotyping analysis. Under the terms of the agreement, the two organizations will work closely together to evaluate and refine application methods on an automated platform, based on the Biomek® FX. The system will be used for preparing target RNA for genotyping on Affymetrix chips.

The collaborative automation platform will increase HPCGG's capacity to conduct experiments that elucidate the role of genes in disease and to study how variations in these genes may affect susceptibility to disease or response to treatment.

"This new workstation is a key addition to our portfolio of high-throughput instrumentation and enhances our capacity to support the research of our investigators. The addition of this system will allow our Expression Profiling Facility to accommodate larger scope microarray analysis projects for gene expression and mapping arrays. The flexibility of the Biomek FX platform will also allow us to manage other protocols on its deck, multiplying our efficiency," said Vance Morgan, Ph.D., Director of Laboratory Operations for HPCGG.

"Successful method development for automated microarray sample prep, particularly for the Affymetrix GeneChip, has been one of our goals," explained John Gerace, Director of Automated Solutions for Beckman Coulter. "This collaboration for the evaluation and refinement of these methods will ensure our success."