Readers In Action

Varioskan: Drug Discovery at Viikki

Overview:

At the University of Helsinki's Viikki Drug Discovery Technology Centre, we are using an advanced, high throughput approach to antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) to examine the efficacy of potential antimicrobials from biological extracts, using the Thermo Scientific Varioskan microplate reader

Before Varioskan:

Our screening work requires the use of optical-based measurements of parameters such as absorbance which are proportional to bacterial growth, at regular time intervals. Previously, we used to repeatedly removal microplates from the incubator to place them in the reader. The reliability of results in such a system therefore, can be seriously compromised by factors such as temperature fluctuations and evaporation from microplate wells as well as condensation on microplate lids.

With the Varioskan we essential now have a single instrument with a spectrophotometer and spectrofluorometer; a temperature controlled incubator; a high speed orbital shaker; and a separate element for heating the lid of microplates, and thus we have overcome the technical shortcomings of the standard approach. This has enabled problem-free evaluation of antimicrobial compounds.

More detail and conclusion:

Successful discovery of novel 'natural' antimicrobials has required us to develop new bioassay techniques and protocols. We needed these to be sensitive enough to detect small amounts of biologically active chemicals, but also selective enough to determine optimum target pathogens. As a result we chose a microplate format, which also enabled us to significantly increase throughput. We did not realise the full potential until we started using the Varioskan. These studies show that the new instrument is ideal for developing and improving susceptibility evaluation of antimicrobials on bacteria.

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