The Laboratory Robotics Interest Group
June 1998 Meeting
The Fourth Annual Vendor's Night
Date: Thursday, June 11, 1998
Place: Forsgate Country Club
Forsgate Drive, Jamesburg, NJ 08831
Phone: (732)521-0070
Itinerary: Exhibitions - 4:30 to 10:00 PM
Presentations - 7:00 to 9:30 PM
Member Pre-Registration: Requested, not required. Pre-registering will allow
us to more accurately gauge seating requirements and refreshment
needs. Indicate names of attendees and company affiliation. Pre-register by
email with <mailto:zaayenga at lab-robotics.org> or by phone at
(732)302-1038. In order to speed sign-in at the meeting, please bring a
business card to drop into the registration box. There will be a business
card drawing for one of our beautiful LRIG rosewood pens.
Agenda: Fifty-six vendor tables of laboratory automation software and
hardware will exhibit, demonstrating their latest products and services.
Presentations are featured in a separate hall during the exhibition. To be
considered for a presentation slot, please send us an abstract. Extensive
hors d’oerves, courtesy of the vendors, will be available as well as a cash
bar. The proceeds from this vendor funded exhibition are used to finance
mailings and pay for various costs of running the group. In this way the
LRIG can operate without collecting dues. Please support the group by
attending this informative and entertaining meeting. Last year’s Vendor’s
Night was extremely successful and we hope to surpass that turnout. For more
information contact Andy Zaayenga <mailto:zaayenga at lab-robotics.org>,
Secretary, or any of the LRIG officers listed below.
There are hotels nearby for attendees who wish to stay overnight.
Members interested in presenting a poster are encouraged to do so. Open
career positions at your company may be announced or posted. There is no
fee to attend the meeting.
______________________________________
Exhibitors:
Absorption Systems
Airfiltronix Corp.
Amersham Pharmacia Biotech
Argonaut Technologies
Beckman Instruments Inc.
Becton Dickinson Labware
Biotica
Bohdan Automation Inc.
Brandel Biomedical
Cartesian Technologies, Inc.
Charybdis Technologies, Inc.
Comdisco Laboratory & Scientific Group
Corning, Inc.
CRS Robotics Corporation
CyberLab Inc.
Datavision Inc.
EG&G Wallac Inc.
EMAX Solution Partners
Fisher Scientific
GeneVac
Gilson Inc.
Greiner America
Groton Neochem LLC
Hamilton Company
Hudson Control Group Inc.
IGEN
LEAP Technologies Inc
Marsh Biomedical Products
Matrix Technologies Corp.
Millipore
Nalge Nunc International
NEN Life Science Products Inc.
Packard Instruments
PerSeptive Biosystems
Robbins Scientific Corporation
Skatron Instruments
Source For Automation Inc.
ST Robotics International
Tecan US Inc.
TekCel
Titertek Instruments
Tomtec Inc.
Triad Scientific
Tropix Inc.
Universal Imaging Corporation
USA / Scientific Plastics
Vangard International Inc.
Waters Corporation
Whatman/Polyfiltronics
Xenopore Corporation
Zymark Corporation
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Presentation: Design strategy and implementation of an automated system for
performing Ultra High Throughput Screening using the current generation of
assay technologies
Mary Jo Wildey, Ph.D.
Research Fellow, New Leads Discovery,
Robert Wood Johnson PRI, Raritan, NJ
Michael Girardi
Zymark Corporation
Expanding the new drug development pipeline is one of the keys to the race
to market for new drugs. Despite a number of promising new developments in
combinatorial chemistry and rational drug design most new leads still come
from empirical testing. This has placed an urgent emphasis on increasing the
throughput of screening to rates as high as 100,000 assays/day. While the
step to UHTS will offer several long term benefits, successful
implementation will depend on reducing the technical risks, maintaining
assay flexibility, and leveraging existing down stream and up stream
processes.
Some argue that the quantum step to 100,000 points per day will only be
realized with new assay technologies and emerging higher density plate
formats. This talk will discuss an automated approach which uses robust
production validated technology and allows current generation of assays to
be run at UHTS rates - today, with the flexibility to be easily reconfigured
to different assay formats, as needs change. Zymark has developed such a
solution called Allegroä , and is currently under contract with 4
collaborators. Some of the results of the first beta test with RW Johnson
Pharmaceutical Research Institute will be discussed. This includes methods
validation data on different assay formats, as well as preliminary
evaluation of the technology.
______________________________________
Presentation: ORIGEN Technology for performing High-Throughput compound
screening assays
Charles Grimshaw, Ph.D.
IGEN Corporation
IGEN possesses a proprietary technology which utilizes
electrochemiluminescent detection to analyze levels of analytes, enzymatic
activities, binding events, nucleic acids, etc.. The technology delivers
highly sensitive and precise answers in a homogeneous format, allowing labs
to decrease the amount of rare reagents and labor required to discover hits
in target assays.
______________________________________
Presentation:
Michelle Palmer
Director, Assay Developmet Services
Mark T. Roskey, Ph.D.
Director, Pharmaceutical Screening Systems
Perkin-Elmer Tropix Inc.
______________________________________
Presentation: Research Automation: An Integrated Approach to Proprietary
and Commercial Substance Supply, Preparation, Tracking, and Request
Fulfillment Using Novel Information Management Technology
David A. Kniaz
Project Director
EMAX Solution Partners
Companies that invest in leading combinatorial chemistry and high throughput
screening technologies need a way to manage the large volumes of proprietary
and commercial substance data created through these automated processes.
Research and development organizations can accelerate their drug discovery
process and control costs through an integrated substance management
solution.
This presentation will discuss how an integrated substance management
solution can bring the following basic elements of logistics management into
place:
* reagent ordering and supply
* stockroom management
* container tracking
* proprietary compound inventory management
* micro-titer plate preparation and tracking
______________________________________
Presentation: An Open, Modular Software Architecture for Laboratory
Automation
Carl Murray
Software Development Manager
Beckman / Sagian
Beckman Coulter's new operating environment for laboratory automation is a
robot-independent, application-independent architecture that allows
applications to be built from reusable, modular components. Each function,
such as device control, data logging, labware transportation, or execution
control, is managed by an independent module written industry-standard
programming tools. A messaging architecture allows these modules to work
together, and permits easy integration of any application that supports
ActiveX components, such as Microsoft Excel. Data management is
standardized, and data can be manipulated by several modules simultaneously.
New modules can be introduced without side effects, and old modules can be
updated without compromising the upgrade path of the system. An example of a
system built with this architecture, Beckman's Core Systems, is used to
illustrate the concepts.
______________________________________
For more information contact:
Executive Chair:
Dennis France
dennis.france at pharma.novartis.com
(973)781-6030
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
Secretary:
Andy Zaayenga
andy.zaayenga at tekcel.com
(732)302-1038
TekCel Corporation
Analytical Chemistry Chair and Treasurer:
William Haller
bhaller at ompus.jnj.com
(908)218-6341
Ortho-McNeil
High Throughput Screening Chair:
John Babiak, Ph.D.
babiakj at war.wyeth.com
(732)274-4788
Wyeth-Ayerst Research
Agricultural Applications Chair:
Sharon Reed
reeds at pt.cyanamid.com
(609)716-2905
American Cyanamid
Data Management Chair:
Steve Fillers, Ph.D.
william.fillers at pharma.novartis.com
(908)277-7723
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
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Directions:
