Solutions that transform the way scientists work

Real-world challenges. Ingenious solutions.

SPT Labtech is a team of exceptionally skilled scientists, engineers and business innovators. We have one overarching mission: to work together to accelerate life science research. Through our innovative solutions and state-of-the-art tools, we believe we can make a real difference to human health.

Collaboration is at the heart of how we work. We listen to our customers and understand the challenges they face, which is why scientists and researchers globally trust us to develop exceptional, personalized solutions. We collaborate internally drawing on our teams’ breadth of expertize, from deep application knowledge to cutting-edge engineering and design. It means that when we recognize a need, we can innovate to meet it and take that idea from initial concept, to prototype, to final manufacture and market.

As an example, we’re helping drive forward challenges within genomics to resize life science with our work on miniaturization, accelerating breakthroughs and pioneering ideas in next generation sequencing. Working together with scientists, we’re achieving results not possible in larger volumes.

A broader portfolio. Bigger breakthroughs.

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With the acquisition by EQT Private Equity in 2022, we are building on our strong foundation of organic and acquisition-driven growth to pursue an ambitious strategic vision of innovation, geographic expansion, and targeting of new markets to address the evolving needs of the life science community.

EQT's acquisition from Battery Ventures follows a period since 2018 during which we diversified and strengthened the SPT Labtech portfolio, allowing us to service an even broader range of needs for our customers.

In August 2019, the introduction of chameleon, which enables the scalable application of cryo-electron microscopy to protein research and drug discovery, took place alongside our acquisition of Quantifoil and their portfolio of world-renowned support foils for electron microscopy. By bringing together this wealth of expertize we have established ourselves as the market leaders for next generation cryo-electron microscopy sample preparation.

In the summer of 2020, we strengthened our position in Asia with the acquisition of LBD Life Sciences, a leading instrumentation supplier in China, positioning us to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the world's fastest growing research community. We also opened an office in Japan, building on long-standing partnerships with Japanese life science distributors, enabling us to meet the needs of the community more effectively and helping to accelerate and elevate their research.

In 2021, we were able to expand our leading range of liquid handling technologies through the acquisition of Apricot Designs, a Californian company with a 30-year track record in supporting increasingly complex laboratory research requirements. As an industry leader in air displacement technology this has complemented our established positive displacement liquid handling range to create a broader and stronger portfolio. This acquisition also brings with it a successful OEM business supplying liquid handling technology to a wide range of life science partners.

2021 also saw the acquisition of BioMicroLab, a robotics automation provider, complementing our capabilities in modular, automated sample storage systems.

Combining these individual strengths within a single portfolio means we can continue to develop breakthrough instruments that not only meet today’s tough life science challenges but empower research success across an even broader spectrum in the future.

World-leading solutions, across the globe

Covina-CA
Covina, CA, USA

Production centre for apricot range

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Melbourn (Cambridge), UK

Global Research and Development and production centre for core SPT Labtech range.

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Quantifoil - Jena, Germany

Global Research and Development and production centre for Quantifoil range.

Tokyo-office
Tokyo, Japan

Commercial hub

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Hangzhou, China

Production centre

Shanghai-office
Shanghai, China

Commercial hub

Delhi-office
Delhi, India

Commercial hub

Working together for real world impact.

We’re proud to partner with leading application scientists and brands around the world to find solutions to life science challenges, from the everyday to the
extremely complex. Each partnership is unique, focused on a particular need and on the people behind it. Take a look at some of our partners’ stories here.

Markus-Synthace

“Our partnership with SPT Labtech enables our customers to run a sophistication of experiments that was previously impossible, giving clear, actionable insight into highly complex biology.”

Markus Gershater, Chief Scientific Officer - Synthace

The collaboration between Synthace and SPT Labtech simplifies sophisticated experimentation, bringing together the innovative liquid-handling power of SPT Labtech’s dragonfly discovery hardware and the flexible planning and data structuring capabilities of Synthace’s software platform. The partnership provides assay development groups with a toolkit to more effectively harness the potential of Design of Experiments (DoE) and realise new levels of efficiency.

While DoE is not a new concept, technical barriers have historically made it difficult to implement beyond proof of concept studies. This partnership is now able to address and overcome the hardware, programming and data handling limitations. The value of this solution goes beyond efficiency - it allows customers to make the most of their datasets by identifying optimal assay conditions that minimize costly reagent use, maximize the assay window and minimize false-positives.

Through a combination of deep application knowledge and cutting edge technology, the Synthace and SPT Labtech partnership provides assay development groups with a transformative integrated platform for rapid and cost-effective assay development and optimization.

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“We’ve got a strong R&D partnership up and running already. SPT were really open to working with us to loan equipment and co-develop new protocols that enabled us to get our covid sequencing pipeline off the ground as quickly as possible.”

Cordelia Langford, Director of Scientific Operations, Wellcome Sanger Institute

The Sanger Institute lives and breathes DNA sequencing. However, they’re new to Coronavirus. In March 2020, they helped form the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium and pledged to contribute to sequencing the genomes of the coronaviruses. 

Sanger and SPT Labtech have been working closely for a number of years. Sanger quickly reached out to SPT Labtech to enlist their support in their covid sequencing project.  

Scientists, Engineers, Applications Scientists and the Logistics team worked with Sanger’s R&D team to get the development methods in place and the project up and running as quickly as possible.

Both the dragonfly discovery and low volume mosquito instrument are now being used throughout the sequencing pipeline. Both instruments are really simple to program and have helped reduce the overall turnaround time on the sequencing data produced. SPT Labtech were able to rapidly scale their manufacturing efforts to meet demands both in terms of instrumentation and consumables. 

The rapid response from SPT Labtech in delivering these new instruments helped make the development of this pipeline smoother and Sanger are now sequencing 10s of thousands of covid-19 genomes every week.

SPT Labtech is immensely proud that the products used in Sanger’s covid sequencing pipeline have been so instrumental in the fight against Covid-19.

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“Our collaboration provides reliable statistical power to interpret results and reduce next-generation sequencing (NGS) library prep costs by 6-fold.”

Sigita Cinciute, Global Product Manager, Thermo Fisher Scientific

SPT Labtech scientists have been working with Thermo Fisher Scientific’s team to understand their needs and develop dedicated protocols that increase efficiency for their customers. 

The partnership is centred around using the mosquito and dragonfly discovery automated liquid handling instruments from SPT Labtech to successfully generate high quality NGS libraries. Miniaturization provides cost savings while maintaining the quality of the Collibri libraries for Illumina NGS systems.

The collaboration has uncovered a multitude of benefits for Thermo Fisher Scientific's customers. Most significantly, the miniaturized reagent volumes now reduce the cost of NGS library prep by 6-fold compared to manual protocols and traditional automated protocols. The solution also offers consistent, reliable variant detection from as little as 1ng of DNA and improves sequencing success rates through the preparation of sample replicates at no additional preparation cost.

Daniel-Thomas

“Our partnership with SPT Labtech allows Arctoris to deliver enhanced drug discovery efficiencies and consistent data through improved experimental models, automation and integrated workflows ”

Dan Thomas, Head of Discovery Research, Arctoris Ltd

Technology innovation has very quickly paved the way for data-driven drug discovery. SPT Labtech has partnered with Arctoris, a solution that powers drug discovery programs with more reliable data using their fully automated R&D platform to harness data-driven decision-making.

This agile relationship is focused on the importance of adapting to changing customer needs and ensuring accurate experimental design, coupled with flawless execution and integration of consistent data are at its core.

Arctoris uses the SPT Labtech dragonfly discovery as their liquid handler of choice to deliver crucial flexibility and resolution. The dragonfly’s true positive displacement, large dispense dynamic range, reduced dead volumes and its ability to dispense any liquid class, play a big part in delivering exquisite spatial resolution enabling them to cover many magnitudes of volume.

The dragonfly liquid handler, combined with flexible, intuitive and easy-to-use software has significantly contributed to Arctoris delivering successful next generation drug discovery workflows to their customers with industry leading turnaround times.

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“This partnership allows us to push the limits of sensitivity and scale for NGS applications.”

Nidhanjali Bansal, Product Manager, NGS Reagents, Takara Bio

SPT Labtech’s miniaturization experts and Takara Bio scientists recognize and address the single-cell community's unique needs. SPT Labtech’s expertise in liquid handling technology together with Takara Bio’s full-length scRNA-seq kits— SMART-Seq Single Cell Kit (SSsc), SMART-Seq v4 Kit Ultra® Low Input RNA Kit for Sequencing (SSv4), and the SMART-Seq Stranded Kit—elevates what researchers can accomplish with their samples.

While SSsc’s SMART® technology brings to the table unparalleled sensitivity and unbiased amplification of cDNA transcripts, mosquito HV genomics offers highly accurate and precise multichannel pipetting from 500 nl to 5 µl.

As a result, the partnership formed has enabled automation for single-cell interrogation that saves time and reduces experimental cost by >80% (improving ROI)—while preserving both high library success rate per cell and chemistry sensitivity.

Biosero-quote

“Our partnership with SPT Labtech makes it possible for researchers to create walk-away automation solutions for any workflow.”

Ryan Bernhardt, Chief Commercial Officer, Biosero

Biosero and SPT Labtech have collaborated for many years, supporting a wide range of customer needs, with a complementary vision to help them utilize automation and achieve the best results.

Collaborations include the SPT Labtech dragonfly discovery, an innovative, reliable and accurate reagent dispenser, the compact, versatile and fast BioTek BioStack plate stacker and Green Button Go Scheduler software, enabling scientists to benefit from having a standalone screening and plating system.

Recent projects include tailored workcells that combined Biosero Green Button Go Scheduler with the SPT Labtech mosquito and dragonfly instruments to support large-scale genome sequencing of the SAR-CoV-2 virus for COVID-19 research.

By combining the flexible Biosero scheduling software with SPT Labtech's innovative technology, scientists benefit from an integrated automation solution that is more flexible, more productive, and easier to use. 

#1 Bioz Rising Star™ - SPT Labtech is the most cited supplier of liquid handling technologies

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