(1200-A) A Magnetic-ELISA (MAG-LISA) High-Throughput robotic platform to perform fast and reliable Immunoassays for Vaccine development

Abstract: Specific and efficient capture of biotin-tagged antigens (proteins and polysaccharides) on streptavidin surface due to the extremely high-affinity interaction has found use in a diverse range of biological applications including immunoassays. This tagging is particularly useful if applied to antigens that for their chemical-physical characteristics don’t bind well to ELISA plates and may led to highly variable or inconsistent results. In this poster we describe the application of a magnetic immunoassay to a fully automated High-Throughput E2E (End to End) platform composed by several instruments. To meet the needs of high-performance with high operational flexibility along with a remarkable improve in bio-safety, we have setup this new modular robotic platform to support preclinical and early clinical vaccine R&D. The liquid handling unit is placed into a BSL-2 level cabinet in order to improve biosafety in case of manipulation of infected or suspicious infected samples. Plate transport on the system is performed by a collaborative robot (co-robot). The system is provided by a scheduling software “dynamic scheduler” feature that allows for the “continuous feeding” of the machine by adding extra plates at the end of the current batch, without stopping the system. The utility of the systems has been demonstrated successfully by testing a big number of serum samples obtained from rabbits, mice, rat immunised with a four components meningococcus vaccine (serotypes A; C; W and Y).