The specialty of Crucell as part of Johnson & Johnson is fighting infectious diseases, a growing healthcare challenge. R&D at Crucell involves running a large panel of assays often including live viruses, patient samples or both, requiring biosafety level 2 environments. To increase throughput and accuracy while reducing per‐assay costs, a fully automated assay system was established. The assay system was entirely customized to our requirements: (1) permit full automation of our homogenous and live‐cell based assays in their current 96‐well format (2) offer the possibility of migration towards 384‐well format (3) offer BSL‐2 level person and product protection in a stand‐alone format with a footprint less than 8m2, without the need to remodel pre‐existing laboratory space. The resulting fully‐enclosed system offers great flexibility, biosafety and user‐friendliness. This talk introduces such a system and summarizes the lessons learned during the project.
Krisztian Kaszas, Crucell (Johnson & Johnson)