INTEGRA Biosciences awarded 3 PIPETBOY acu 2 serological pipette controllers to the 2023 iGEM Competitors group at Technische Universität Braunschweig (TU_BS) to assist their pioneering analysis into lithium remedy toxicity testing. The pipette controllers enhanced the group’s pipetting precision and streamlined the a number of liquid dealing with duties concerned on this thrilling undertaking, serving to them to realize their undertaking targets.
The iGEM Competitors is an annual artificial biology occasion open to teams of highschool, undergraduate and graduate college students from everywhere in the world, and is devoted to advancing discoveries that can assist to resolve among the issues at the moment going through the atmosphere and human well being. Lithium-based therapies are extremely efficient temper stabilizers which can be generally used to deal with psychological well being situations, akin to bipolar dysfunction. Nevertheless, lithium might be poisonous at increased concentrations, making common monitoring of blood lithium stage extraordinarily essential. Sadly, these assessments have to be carried out by medical professionals in a healthcare atmosphere, requiring frequent and inconvenient hospital visits and blood assessments.
The TU_BS group’s Li+onSwitch undertaking aimed to discover the opportunity of making a novel self-testing technique that may be carried out at residence. INTEGRA provided the lab with 3 PIPETBOY acu 2 serological pipette controllers in June 2023, as Daniel, a member of the 2023 iGEM group, defined: “A big a part of our work included designing our personal plasmid constructs and testing potential reporter methods, and we labored extensively with liquid cultures. We have been very excited to obtain the PIPETBOY controllers, and so they shortly turned important each day instruments in our lab, considerably dashing up our repetitive pipetting protocols. This enormous cumulative time saving led to higher productiveness, and freed us as much as give attention to different facets of our analysis. The PIPETBOYs are additionally extraordinarily exact devices, so helped to enhance the reproducibility and consistency of our many handbook liquid dealing with duties.”
The iGEM Grand Jamboree befell from November 2-5 in Paris, and the TU_BS group was awarded Greatest Diagnostics Mission, Overgrad, in addition to a gold medal. They have been additionally ranked within the high 10 postgraduate groups, and have been nominated for Greatest New Composite Half, Overgrad. These achievements are a testomony to the group’s diligence over the previous months.
