Immediate drop on demand technology (i-doT). Direct High Throughput Liquid Handling out of MWPs

One of the basic steps in the process technologies for drug discovery is the high throughput handling of small amounts of liquids. The processing of mediums as well as the cleaning of the dosing system is an enormous time, cost and quality factor for conventional dosing systems. At Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) a method has been developed that avoids this extensive process. The principle of the new method consists of equipping the well grounds of a corrugated plate with very thin holes in a way that the capillary-pressure is greater than the pressure in the drilling hole induced by the liquid-level in the well. Thus, a leakage is being prevented. By a pneumatic pressure pulse a sample of ~5 nl may be taken, whereby the total dispensed volume is controlled by the number of drops and the pulse duration. With this technology it is possible to transfer probes between several formats of MWPs without any pipetteting steps. With molded micro well plates it is possible to achieve a cheap disposable with good nozzle parameters. These could be used for high-throughput applications like plate reformation or cherry-picking. Even 1536 or higher formats can be filled with this technology. The presentation will show data of the accuracy and the speed and the application fields of this technology and it will cover the technological aspects of i-doT.