Discussion

In vitro selection of nucleic acid aptamers can be a lengthy and tedious process with many steps where the process can fail if proper care is not taken. Several companies have turned to automation in order to minimise the number of manual steps. At best, this process has to-date been reduced to a semi-automated process. To keep up with our customers’ needs, in collaboration with Beckman Coulter, we have developed a fully automated system for identifying and characterising high affinity, high specificity aptamers. The use of high throughput robotics in aptamer selection allows unparalleled throughput with stringent quality control, automated feedback loops and on-line affinity monitoring and ranking, allowing the system to run uninterrupted from a given target, to affinity ranked individual aptamers with minimal human interaction.