“Our unique hydrogels offer researchers many advantages, particularly for miniturisation and assay scale up, so we have been looking for the most compatible high throughput dispensing systems for use with our gels. In a collaboration with the Institute for Molecular Medicine of Finland (FIMM), the CERTUS FLEX proved to be an ideal device for dispensing GrowDex hydrogels for many reasons.

The Certus Flex is a low pressure-based dispensing system. It can be equipped with accessory syringes of up to 60 ml, which have smaller dead volume when compared to other automated dispensing platforms. Furthermore, dispensing directly from a syringe works well for viscous materials like our hydrogels which have shear-thinning properties. Dispensing speed is fast, for example 57 seconds to dispense 25 µl of hydrogel into each well of a 384 well plate and with 2 parallel syringes the dispensing time is reduced further to 31 seconds. Excellent accuracy and reproducibility were observed, with the SMLD300 GC microvalves providing CV values below 2% for GrowDex and for GrowDex-T CV values of less than 3%.

A key advantage of the system is the 22° angled dispensing head that prevents back splashing, minimizes air bubbles and when adding/changing media limits disturbance of the gel layer. CERTUS FLEX is also very cost competitive and dispensing directly from the syringe means there is no requirement for additional pipette tips.

In our opinion CERTUS FLEX is well suited for high-precision and high-speed dispensing of our GrowDex hydrogels and can save researchers time, reagents and thus costs.”