VOYAGER electronic pipettes support breakthroughs in analgesia research

Scientists at Purdue University in Indiana, USA, are using VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipettes and PIPETBOY acu 2 serological pipet controllers to accelerate drug discovery for new chronic pain therapies. These pipettes help the team to improve the throughput and reproducibility of assays in a 384 well format, supporting vital research into targeted, opioid-free pain treatments.

In addition to opioid receptors, chronic pain medications often target ion channels that are expressed ubiquitously throughout the nervous system, resulting in side effects. Analgesia research is therefore moving towards alternative non-opioid, more selective treatments to reduce these off-target effects. Adenylyl cyclase (AC) enzymes is one such therapeutic target, and studies have shown that knocking out these enzymes – particularly AC1 – is highly effective in alleviating chronic pain and could cause fewer side effects than drugs targeting widespread ion channels.

Dr Val Watts is a Professor and Associate Dean for Research in the Borch Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Purdue University and heads up the multi-disciplinary Watts laboratory. His team studies the regulation of ACs, their signalling mechanisms, and potential enzyme inhibitors, using INTEGRA Biosciences’ single and multichannel VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipettes – as well as a PIPETBOY acu 2 serological pipet controller – for the repetitive dispensing tasks involved in these assays. Dr Watts described why they chose these liquid handling solutions: “We routinely need to pipette quickly and consistently in a 384 well format, but manual methods can be slow and prone to inter-user variability and errors. I started using VOYAGER pipettes because of their flexibility; the device allows us to precisely dispense into just a few wells or rapidly fill an entire 384 well plate with very little hands-on time.”

“Another great thing about the VOYAGER is the adjustable tip spacing feature, which allows us to pipette from microcentrifuge tubes to 96 well plates, and then to 384 well plates, all with a single pipette. They are easy to use and highly intuitive, and we can easily create customized pipetting protocols using the simple touch wheel and user interface. These pipettes simplify assay set-up, giving us more time to spend on critical research into targeted, non-opioid treatments for chronic pain.”

Visit the INTEGRA Biosciences website to learn more.

About INTEGRA Biosciences

INTEGRA Biosciences (www.integra-biosciences.com) is a leading provider of high-quality laboratory tools and consumables for liquid handling. The company is committed to creating innovative solutions which fulfil the needs of its customers in research, diagnostics and quality control within the life sciences markets and medical sector. INTEGRA's portfolio also encompasses next-generation sequencing (NGS) solutions, with automated workflows and magnetic bead-based reagents for reliable NGS sample preparation. INTEGRA's engineering and production teams in Zizers, Switzerland and Hudson, NH, USA, strive to develop and manufacture instruments and consumables of outstanding quality. Today, INTEGRA's innovative laboratory products are widely used all around the world where they help scientists accelerate scientific discovery. INTEGRA is an ISO 9001 certified company.