Speed ​​up sample preparation to speed up analytical chemistry

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Please, could you introduce yourself and tell us what inspired you in your career in science?

My name is Colin Jump, and I’m the CEO of ePrep, based in Victoria, Australia. Growing up, I was always curious about how things work and why such things exist in the world. This curiosity basically started my career in science and engineering where I started my career as a telecom engineer and later moved on to other sciences.

Can you tell us more about ePrep and some of your tasks?

ePrep was created about eight years ago to automate manual processes in laboratory sample preparation. We developed a working system over the five to eight year period that automated many of the manual steps involved in sample preparation.

At a Glance – ePrep Explained

Although a relatively new company, the team behind Your Technology has been gathering scientific knowledge for over 60 years. With such a diverse team and experience, how does it help when understanding the needs and wants of analytical chemists?

An understanding of the needs and wants of analytical chemists comes from the team’s expertise in fluid handling and the analytical sciences. The founder of ePrep is the son of the founder of SGE, and they started with analytical syringes and later dabbled in chromatography analytical consumables.

Having that history behind us is invaluable to understanding our customers’ needs in terms of sample preparation and sample preparation automation.

The life sciences sector has seen amazing developments in recent years, with automation technologies accelerating many research processes. Despite this, some areas in the life sciences, such as sample preparation, have not benefited significantly. Why is that, and how is your technology changing this?

At conferences such as SLAS, it quickly becomes apparent how little, if any, automated systems for preparing analytical samples exist. This is due to the complex nature of automating analytical sample preparation. It took us five to eight years as a company to develop such a system, and nobody in the market is doing what we’re doing now.

At ePrep, I’ve created a suite of products focused on automating analytical sample preparation. Can you tell us more about this product and its research applications?

The product itself is based on analytical syringes, which move in extremely small volumes, down to microliters, even milliliters, in a highly accurate and reproducible manner. We can load 12 different types of syringes on a workstation.

The robot can choose the syringe best suited for the workflow it needs to perform, such as environmental, food, or clinical applications. The product is highly customizable, and with such intuitive software, we find that most users can take it from the box to the seat and have it up and running in 30 minutes, which is very unusual in this business.

The program is designed to be very intuitive, using a drag and drop approach. This means that if using a tablet, you can program your workflow simply by sliding your finger across the shelves. This makes our product completely different from anything else on the market.

glass vials

Image credit: Nordroden/Shutterstock.com

Sample preparation is a vital part of the analytical research process as this can often directly affect the observed results. With such an important role to play, what advantages do your products offer analytical chemists?

Due to its delicate nature and reproducibility, the robot can operate outside of normal business hours. This allows the user to load up to 100 samples at once on the workstation, configure the workflow, press the Go button, and let it run independently, removing any boring and filtering pipettes.

Solid phase extraction (SPE) can also be performed on a workstation, all by a robot, in a highly accurate and reproducible manner.

Do you think that with new automated techniques being developed around sample preparation, this will in turn further accelerate the field of analytical chemistry?

Certainly, if you look into any analytical laboratory, you will find that this tedious manual sample preparation is done by a lot of people. The introduction of bots like ePrep frees up these people to be able to perform other tasks in the lab, which are more useful for science.

With so many new discoveries and startups in the life sciences field, what do you personally look forward to most in the future? Are there particular hacks that turn you on?

The achievement that we are looking forward to and currently working on with collaborators is an extension of automated sample preparation all the way through the entire workflow to HPLC or GC and then using the mass spectrometer as a detector. That’s going to be a seamless workflow, and I think we’re not far from it.

You are currently attending SLAS, an international fair that brings together researchers and industry professionals. Why are trade fairs like SLAS important in sharing new ideas and creating new partnerships?

Face-to-face meetings are invaluable. You can do a lot over Teams, Zoom, and similar platforms, but humans want to talk to other humans, and commercial offerings like SLAS are invaluable. For example, on this show, I actually discovered a gem or two that I wasn’t aware of before.

What’s next for ePrep? Are you involved in any exciting upcoming projects?

We are currently working in collaboration with some large industry partners. However, in terms of our development cycle, we want to spend more time with the software.

There are some new features that we want to introduce to the program to make it even more user friendly than it already is. Over the next year or so, there will be some major updates to the software.

However, collaboration is really important, and here we see how sample preparation can be automated in analytical laboratories because our platform is designed for chromatography applications.

About Colin Jump

Colin Jump, CEO, ePrep Pty Ltd – Automated automated sample preparation

35 years of experience in the life sciences market.Colin Jump

I have held many senior leadership positions for various organizations during my career. This occupation also included the role of CEO of a UK listed company and he was responsible for raising equity funds on 3 occasions.

Since moving to Australia in 2016, I have successfully transformed a manufacturing business in Sydney, researching and developing electron multipliers in the mass spec industry and subsequently helping the company find new ownership. I am now leading an innovative project to develop a unique platform for automated sample preparation for chromatography/MS applications.

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