The Tecan Group and QIAGEN N.V. have announced a collaboration to improve the processing of QIAGEN’s QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus (QFT-Plus) diagnostic test through the utilization of Tecan’s Fluent^® Laboratory Automation workstation for the aliquoting of samples for the optional Lithium Heparin single-tube workflow. The Fluent instruments will be supplied directly to laboratories through Tecan’s Life Sciences Business.

QIAGEN’s fourth-generation QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus is the modern gold standard for latent tuberculosis (TB) detection based on world leading interferon gamma release assay (IGRA) technology.

QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus offers customers the most flexible workflow among latent TB screening tests, including a single-tube option that enables efficient screening in large-scale programs by collecting blood samples at patient sites and transporting them to labs for processing up to 53 hours after venipuncture.

The two parties are working together to optimize a solution that standardizes and automates the manual steps in liquid handling for the aliquoting of samples. Customers will be able to leverage the high-performance Fluent automation system and thereby achieve the goal of significantly reducing hands-on time, providing greater ease of use and ensure consistency in pre-analytic methods and thereby reducing processing errors and variability between runs. Front-end automation solutions also offer laboratories efficient automation of single tube collection for QuantiFERON, and thereby create efficiency in the lab and improve the patient blood collection experience.