Stories & Features
2020 Innovations: Making Scientist’s Life Easy During the Pandemic
Feb 10, 2021
by
IDEX Health & Science
Throughout the pandemic, IDEX Health & Science has been working with companies around the world who are creating new assays and instrument platforms to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include enabling next generation diagnostics and vaccine development with our fluidic subsystems to identify SARS-CoV-2 and aiding more effective point-of-care testing analysis with our optical filters that can improve detection sensitivity. Our manufacturing team has been working diligently in compliance with new protocols to ensure employee safety and on time delivery to our customers.
In today’s fast-paced market, innovation to enable the latest industry trends is the key to success. Throughout 2020, our research and development team continued to focus on developing new, best-in-class fluidic products to meet your needs. The following new products were developed with a priority to simplify ease-of-use and instrument integration.
- Film Degasser– Designed with an innovative high performing membrane and a unique bioinert flow channel design, this degassing product enables the highest efficiency and the lowest fluidic resistance in the market.
- Constant Performance Degassing Pump– Integrated with our Film Degasser chamber to provide increased performance and tighter control for chromatography instrument precision and reliability.
- BioVersal™ Sample Loops– These sample loops are 100% bioinert, making them ideal when injecting biological or “sticky” samples. In conjunction with our torque-limiting, MarvelX™ fittings, they can provide zero dead volume and better chromatographic results.
- MarvelXACT™ PEEKsil™ Connection System– This bioinert connection system utilizes our MarvelXACT torque-limiting fittings and robust PEEKsil tubing to achieve zero dead volume and superior chromatographic results.
- Intuitive™ Torque- Limiting Fitting System– This bioinert, “finger tight” fitting when integrated with our custom tubing assemblies ensures a robust and reliable low-pressure fluidic connection.
Other benefits these products offer are enabling universal application and an enhanced user experience. The film degasser uses a non-metallic flow path, which enables universal application of a single type of degasser to multiple types of HPLC methods. The Intuitive fitting is also a universal solution, as it works flawlessly with our rich portfolio of connections systems including Flanged, Flangeless, and Super Flangeless. Intuitive fittings along with the BioVersal Sample Loops and MarvelXACT PEEKsil connection system utilize our torque-limiting technology that provides a haptic “click” feedback when it reaches the optimum torque, assuring a perfect zero dead volume connection every time. We strive to make these new fluidic connections with the highest flexibility in mind.
Although these 5 new products were not designed directly for COVID-19 healthcare solutions, they all enable various instruments and assays development related to critical health-related applications. Diagnostic testing kits for COVID-19 can produce more reliable results and prevent anomalies in data with proper degassing. They also counteract out-gassing that can affect the validity, economics, and even the regulatory approval of your product with our highly efficient film degasser and constant performance degassing pump.
With the advent of SARS-CoV-2, pharmaceutical and biotech companies quickly aligned to devote significant resources into vaccine and therapeutic drug development. In support of these activities, multiple types of advanced analytical technologies, such as UHPLC and Mass Spectrometry, have been put into service in research labs to increase throughput and the pace of discovery and testing. Our BioVersal series of fluidics components are the best fit for biological analyses and are ideal for protein and peptide analysis. Optimize sample recovery and reduce carryover with bio-inert PEEK and PEEK-lined components.
The accuracy and precision of any instrument in the analytical instrumentation or the in-vitro diagnostic and biotechnology field is heavily, if not completely, reliant on the tools of the fluidic management system. From precision molding and 5-axis CNC automation, to clean assembly and reliable product quality control, IDEX Health & Science possesses a full spectrum of capabilities to fulfill the needs of customized life science, analytical, and IVD instrumentation.
In the midst of this pandemic, we want to focus on your top priorities and understand the critical parameters for instruments that can help in the fight against COVID-19. Our R&D engineering team would love to collaborate with your manufacturing, engineering, and operations teams from the very beginning of every project to ensure design for manufacturability is considered, from initial conception through full production and platform launch.