Echo Liquid Handling for Microsampling

Reduce Costs and Use Fewer Animals in PK and PD Studies with Echo Liquid Handlers and Serial Microsampling

High precision, low volume fluid transfers by the Echo Liquid Handler make it possible for researchers to perform serial sampling for pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) studies — dramatically reducing study costs and animal use while increasing data quality.

Benefits of Microsampling on the Echo Liquid Handler

Microsampling better addresses the 3 R’s of animal welfare: Replace, Refine, Reduce

• Use as little at 1 µL of plasma from mice vs 50 µL with no loss of data quality
• Less stress on test animals
• Enables alternative blood collection that does not require surgery
• Less animal mortality

Decrease study costs

• Save up to 80% of study costs, 89% of animal costs, and 75% of test compound used*
• Use of fewer animals in study

Increased data quality

• Removes the animal to animal variability seen in composite collection studies by decreasing the number of subjects used within a study
• Less disturbance to critical physiological parameters such as heart and respiratory rate
• Utilize the same animals for PK and PD studies for better correlation between drug level and drug action

In a typical mouse PK study, you can up to save 9X the number of mice* — helping your lab better address the 3 R’s and animal welfare.

Composite PK Studies		Serial PK Studies
Euthanize mouse for each time point to collect 700 µL of blood through a cardiac sample		Collect 20 µL of blood from mouse tail vein for each time point — enabling the reuse of the animal for each data point

Eliminate compound loss and get more data per animal during PK studies – further reducing animal usage

In addition to the highly accurate and precise transfers, non-contact acoustic dispensing performed by Echo Liquid Handlers eliminates the potential for compound loss on tips making the transition to microsampling easier. Increased compound potency enables the use of miniaturized reactions, reducing the volume of plasma needed per PK study and allowing for the use of microsampling.

In a Medimmune study**, the use of the Echo Liquid Handler in peptide PK assays showed an increase of 88% data collected per animal. This gain was attributed to the elimination of peptides absorbance to tips, requiring the use of less sample and directly resulting in the reduction in animal usage.

* Joyce, A.; M. Wang; R. Lawrence-Henderson et al. (2014) One Mouse, One Pharmacokinetic Profile: Quantitiave Whole Blood Sampling Serial Sampling for Biotherapeutics. Pharm Res. DO1 10.007/s1 1095-013-1286-y.
** Naylor, J.; A. Rossi; and D. Hornigold. (2016) Acoustic Dispensing Preserves the Potency of Therapeutic Peptides throughout the Entire Drug Discovery Workflow. JALA. 21(1), 90-96.