Cellular Assays

Your cellular, or cell-based, assays provide extensive data on cell health and response to stimuli, but the ever-increasing demands on your time mean these assays need to be as robust and efficient as possible.

At PAA, with our long history of simplifying workflows through user interfaces, software and automation, we understand how to make cellular assays reliable and scalable. Read on to find out how we support the automation of cellular assays.

Overlord Interface
Overlord scheduling software integrates and controls automated workflows

How our software solutions automate your cellular assays

Integrating with a variety of hardware, our innovative software solutions enable seamless automation of a wide range of cellular assay workflows:

  • Harmony interface enables all your lab users to run cell-based assays with minimal training.
  • Assay Manager interface enables busy labs to run batches of samples simultaneously.
  • Overlord software takes care of scheduling with its easy-to-use and understand interface.

Overlord is the core to all our laboratory automation software products, ensuring optimal throughput by calculating process flow, read times, and incubation times to interleave batches.

Overlord scheduling software can control instrumentation for both cellular imaging and flow cytometry applications. When your assay is complete, Overlord automatically e-mails you the image / data, ready to review.

It works 24/7, providing you with advanced, error-free assay automation.

Request a copy of our S-CEL laboratory workcells brochure to find out how we can solve your automation requirements

Integrating software and hardware for automated live cell assays

We take a vendor-neutral approach to assembling your automated assay solution. We want you to have the optimum equipment for your application, and so our software solutions are designed to integrate with an ever-growing list of hardware.  We can offer bench top automation based around our S-LAB plate handler through to large fully autonomous enclosed workcells.

If you need to perform live cell imaging, we will include an incubator, adding a low oxygen option for hypoxia studies in your system.

For high content screening and cellular imaging, we have integrated systems from all the major suppliers, including:

  • GE Healthcare Life Sciences – IN Cell Analyzer 6500HS
  • Carl Zeiss – Celldiscoverer 7
  • PerkinElmer – Operetta CLS and Opera Phenix
  • Molecular Devices SpectraMax i3x, iD3, iD5
  • Molecular Devices ImageXpress Pico
  • Yokogawa – CellVoyager
  • BioTek Citation
  • Thermo Arrayscan

For flow cytometry, our automation solution minimises user input with sequential stacks for batch runs and a chilled incubator to keep the cells in a stable state for processing.

Automatable flow cytometry systems already integrated in our software include:

  • IntelliCyt – iQue3
  • Miltenyi Biotec – MACS Flow Cytometer
  • Bio-Rad Laboratories – ZE5 Cell Analyzer
  • Propel Labs – ZE5 Cell Analyser (formerly YETI)

Speak to us today about automating your cellular assays

Learn more about how our Overlord scheduling software can control your laboratory instruments