Tecan and TAP Biosystems, a leading supplier of innovative cell culture systems, have announced a co¬-marketing agreement to further expand the automated 3D cell culture capabilities of the Freedom EVO® liquid handling platform

Automation of TAP’s collagen-based RAFT™ cell culture system will allow scientists to quickly and conveniently create 3D cell cultures in a 96-well, SBS-¬format.

The RAFT 3D cell culture system uses biologically relevant concentrations of collagen matrix to ensure cells grow and proliferate in an environment closely resembling the native tissue. The Freedom EVO workstation is configured with a number of modules, including reagent and microplate cooling units and a heated shaking device, to provide fully automated preparation and maintenance of RAFT cell cultures. This ensures rapid, reliable creation of consistent and reproducible 3D cell cultures, offering walkaway processing for a wide range of cell biology applications.

Kevin Moore, Head of Applications and Solutions at Tecan, commented: “We are pleased to further expand our automated 3D cell culture portfolio to include the RAFT system. Working together with TAP Biosystems, we will be able to offer a complete solution for automated 3D cell culture.”

Dr Grant Cameron, TAP Biosystems’ RAFT Development Director, added: “RAFT is rapidly becoming a core secondary screening technology within drug discovery. This exciting collaboration will enable researchers to expand the power of the realistic collagen environment of RAFT, with substantially increased throughput to meet their cell-based screening requirements.”

To find out more about Tecan’s 3D cell culture solutions, visit www.tecan.com/3dcellculture or for more about the RAFT cell culture system, visit www.raft3dcellculture.com