Solutions to Mimic your Assay Reagents

When optimizing your automatic liquid handlers (ALHs), it is best to use liquid types similar to what you use your assay. Different liquids have different physical properties (density, viscosity, surface tension), and behave differently when handled by your ALHs. Using water as the default liquid class for your volume verification method can lead to biased data and costly errors down the road. To help you with your ALH optimization, we offer a range of different QualAssure solutions, so you can choose the ones that best mimic your liquid types.

These solutions can measure performance over a wide volume range of 0.0001 to 350 μL and are available for aqueous and non-aqueous volume transfers, including dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), PCR master mix-like (PCRMix ™) and serum and plasma-like solutions (SerumSub™ and PlasProxy™)

Liquid Class Optimization for Decreased Variability

MVS QualAssure solutions mimic some of the most common reagents used with liquid handlers, so that you can optimize the performance of your assay, and tailor your liquid handler settings to your specific liquid class, tips and plates. By making the necessary adjustments to your liquid handler, you can ensure accurate and precise liquid handling and minimize the variability of your results.

How It Works:  MVS QualAssure solutions contain two dyes: red and blue. Each solution covers a designated target volume range. As the volume-of-interest decreases, the appropriate QualAssure contains an increased concentration of red dye, thereby maintaining constant signal strength to the plate reader detector. The blue dye is used as an internal standard to measure the solution depth in every well. MVS QualAssure are solutions prepared by Artel and conform to rigorous performance specifications.

Metrological Traceability

Metrological traceability is maintained to the international system of units (SI). Photometric standards are calibrated at the National Physical Laboratory of the United Kingdom. Qualification of reference spectrophotometers meets applicable standards such as the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), ISO, CLSI, and ASTM International.

Quality Testing

• Calibration of all solutions is performed with very precise methods.
  • ±0.0004 AU for 730 nm measurements
  • Accuracy measured with uncertainty as low as 0.033%
• The Artel laboratory maintains an ISO 17025 scope of accreditation for calibration methods used to test all manufactured solutions.
• All laboratory chemists go through a rigorous training and qualification plan prior to performing methods.
• Proficiency testing via inter-laboratory and intra-laboratory comparison monitors the competence of all laboratory chemists.
• The laboratory environment meets the requirements of ISO 8655 and NIST SOP 14.
• The laboratory maintains a registered quality management system according to ISO 9001 which ensures document control, record control, risk/opportunity, improvement, corrective action, internal audits and management review.