Resources

Explore insightful resources that include videos, whitepapers, eBooks, application notes and more

dragonfly

Enabling VPS4B Drug Discovery Through a Robust and Miniaturized ATPase Screening Platform

The dragonfly discovery was successfully validated with the Transcreener assay in both 384- and 1536-well formats, demonstrating highly reproducible performance across plate densities.

Poster

A design of Experiments Toolbox for Assay Development and Optimization

In this poster we demonstrate that the dragonfly® discovery's accurate, repeatable and rapid low volume transfers, paired with synthace, enabled it to develop a robust RecBCD assay, which offers a versatile toolbox for novel assay optimization

Poster

Generating Bespoke Datasets for Foundation Models in AI Drug Discovery

The application of AI in drug discovery relies on high-quality, reproducible training datasets. Traditional screening campaigns focus on identifying potent hits, but ML-driven drug discovery requires comprehensive potency evaluation across entire compound libraries. Here, we introduce a partial concentration-response curve (pCRC) approach that estimates potency using just two data points per compound. We onboarded a panel of 65 diverse kinases and screened 7000 compounds against the panel at ATP concentrations near Kₘ to minimize modality bias, achieving a mean robust Z’ of 0.74 across all targets. A direct comparison of 100 fragments tested in both 2-point pCRC and conventional 11-point CRC formats demonstrated excellent correlation, confirming that our pCRC methodology produces high-quality data suitable for ML model training. The integration of our automation platform, including SPT Labtech’s dragonfly® discovery, with automated data pipelines enabled the generation of 221,000 high-quality ML-ready data points per day, accelerating the development of foundation model training for drug discovery.

Webinar

dragonfly discovery - How to dispense Matrigel and PeptiMatrix hydrogels

This video gives a tutorial on how to dispense Matrigel and PeptiMatric hydrogels using the Dragonfly discovery for use cases such as for 3D Cell culture. The dragonfly® discovery is a low volume, positive displacement, non-contact dispenser. The instrument is available in three configurations that differ by the number of dispense heads (3, 6, 10) or channels. Channels can be combined for fast bulk reagent dispensing (as demonstrated in this video), or, used independently to dispense any volume of any liquid class into any well at any time.

Tutorial

Advancing 3D Cell Culture: Automated positive displacement dispensing of MCF7 and HepG2 cells, mixed with PeptiMatrix™ Hydrogel

In vitro cell cultures are essential for modelling disease, but traditional 2D cell culture systems fall short in replicating the complex microenvironments of native tissues. This limitation hinders the translation of in vitro findings to in vivo contexts and contributes to the high attrition rates seen in drug discovery pipelines.

Application note

Automating antibiotic discovery in academia: A collaborative screening effort to identify novel TB therapeutics

In this webinar, hear how a collaboration between SPT Labtech, Automata, GSK, and researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, employed cutting-edge automation tools, including the dragonfly® discovery liquid handling system by SPT Labtech and Automata’s LINQ platform, to conduct a high-throughput enzymatic screen targeting a vulnerable pathway in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb).

Webinar

Designing the future of cultivated meat: An Uncommon journey to cost-effective stem cell growth media

Cellular agriculture could be instrumental to environmentally-friendly food production. However, high raw materials costs impede financial viability. This poster highlights how the team at Uncommon have applied automated liquid handling and Design of Experiment (DoE) methodology to drive the development of low-cost, animal-free media.

Poster

Advancing in vitro high-throughput transcriptomics for chemical toxicity testing | SPT Labtech

Hear from researchers from McGill University, as they present case studies in optimizing and advancing efficient workflows that couple in vitro exposures with ultraplexed library preparation using the QIAseq UPXome RNA Library Kit. This approach has increased the throughput of differential expression and dose-response analysis for tPODs derivation.

Webinar

Optimizing multi-cellular models for high-throughput screening - Webinar

Join us as we dive into recent research which has combined Design of Experiments methodology with automated liquid handling to develop a cardiotoxicity assay platform. We discuss how this approach could become routine in the future, not only offering more accurate predictability of new drug candidates, but also enabling researchers to leverage resources more efficiently through streamlined workflows and data-driven decision-making.

Webinar

Transforming PCR protocols in pandemic response with automated non-contact liquid dispensing

The UK’s first testing “megalab”, the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory (RFL) in Royal Leamington Spa, was established in 2021 with the aim of processing and sequencing thousands of COVID-19 tests a week, playing a key role in preventing disease outbreaks and responding to new variants of concern and future disease threats. With the critical need for accurate pathogen surveillance, the manual execution of PCR workflows emerged as a bottleneck, limiting throughput and introducing potential for human error and variability among lab personnel. To enhance efficiency and data quality, the lab chose to adopt dragonfly® discovery to improve the accuracy and reliability of extraction plate preparation for the UltraDX SARS-CoV-2 N1/N2/RP assay (LGC, Biosearch Technologies).

Poster

dragonfly® discovery: Pioneering Sustainable Liquid Handling in the Modern Laboratory

In this poster, we highlight the significant role that dragonfly discovery plays in reducing the environmental impact of liquid handling workflows. In our first case study, dragonfly discovery demonstrates a reduction in plastic pipette tip usage by over 99% compared to traditional air displacement pipetting systems when performing a 3456-run enzymatic assay operated by 6-factor space-filling Design of Experiment (DoE). In Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) library preparation workflows, such as the NEBNext® Ultra™ II FS DNA Library prep kit presented in our second case study, dragonfly discovery achieves a plastic reduction of over 50%.

Poster

High-throughput bacterial isolation and culture using dragonfly® discovery for rapid single-cell dispensing in 384-well molten agar plates

We aim to perform high-throughput culturomics analysis of the vaginal microbiome with the goal of developing live biotherapeutics that modulate the composition and function of the vaginal microbiome to improve women’s gynecological and obstetric health. To achieve this, we need to better understand the intra-species diversity of the beneficial bacterium, Lactobacillus crispatus, and perform in-depth within-sample cultivation to obtain co-resident L. crispatus strains.

Application note

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