INTEGRA is aiding scientists in the vital task of tackling antibiotic resistance by providing the liquid handling tools to help increase throughput and reproducibility in drug development workflows. The company’s ASSIST PLUS pipetting robot, and VIAFLO 96, VIAFLO 384, and MINI 96 handheld electronic pipettes meet the needs of early-phase drug discovery by offering high throughput processing of routine pipetting tasks – such as serial dilutions and plate inoculation – without compromising on precision and reproducibility.

Drug discovery requires large-scale screening to assess the activity of novel compounds against various bacteria. Determining crucial parameters – such as the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), IC50, EC50, or LD50 – of candidate antibiotics is an essential step in this process, requiring the generation of multiple serial dilutions and several replicates for every compound. Repetitive pipetting tasks are therefore a common feature in the daily activities of drug discovery labs, and INTEGRA offers a range of time-saving solutions that relieve staff of this burden. 

INTEGRA’s ASSIST PLUS can be combined with the company’s VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipette to provide an elegant walk-away solution for performing serial dilutions in microplates. This setup can automate compound transfer and mixing steps – performing them faster and more reliably than manual processing – and allows rapid transfer of compounds or bacterial inoculum from tube formats directly to microplates. Similarly, the VIAFLO 96, VIAFLO 384, or MINI 96 handheld electronic pipettes can be used to perform simultaneous inoculation of every well of a microplate, significantly accelerating assay set-up and eliminating time-associated variability. These innovative pipetting systems, together with other solutions from the INTEGRA portfolio, are helping to alleviate the pipetting bottleneck in antibiotic development, streamlining routine pipetting tasks for more efficient and productive workflows.

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