Pipetting robotic system

• Subject Area: Basic Research in Biology and Medicine
• Term: Funded in 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 584786875

The analysis of chemical compounds is of central importance for the development of new drugs. The insights gained from chemical biology represent a crucial step in academic drug discovery. In recent years, the instrumental infrastructure for high-throughput investigation of small molecules has improved dramatically. In particular, innovative liquid-handling technologies enable faster and more precise generation of assay data compared with conventional pipetting methods. In contactless pipetting processes, small droplets are detached from individual wells of a microtiter source plate and transferred into a destination plate using ultrasound-based or pressure-based technologies. The volumes that can be dispensed range from the nanoliter scale up to a few microliters. A major advantage of these innovative technologies is the high degree of miniaturization, which results in substantial savings of reagents and a significant reduction in waste. In addition, fully automated operation of pipetting robots increases the accuracy, reproducibility, and throughput of experiments. By combining a contactless pipetting robot with a dispenser-based pipetting system, fully automated experiments—such as cell-based assays—can be performed directly after compound transfer into the target plate, enabling efficient downstream analysis of test substances. At the Kiel site, the “E3Clypse” platform was established in the previous year and will facilitate future small-molecule screening efforts. E3Clypse already comprises several key instruments, including a multimodal microtiter plate reader, a screening microscope, and a live-cell analysis system acquired last year through the DFG large-equipment funding program. Integrating the requested instrument into this existing platform will allow optimal analysis of test compounds in subsequent cell-based assays. A central goal of the applicant research groups is to advance the understanding of oncological, inflammatory, and neurodegenerative diseases and to improve therapeutic approaches. In collaboration with medicinal chemistry partners, compound libraries will be systematically analyzed to this end. In addition, high-throughput sequencing methods will be employed, for which fully automated sample preparation enables substantial time savings and ensures high data quality. Beyond its use by the applicant groups, this system will significantly strengthen research activities at CAU as a whole. In particular, research groups in biochemistry, pharmacy, and at the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH) will benefit from the acquisition of a contactless and dispenser-based pipetting robotic system.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Pipettierrobotersystem
• Instrumentation Group: 1060 Dilutoren, Pipettiergeräte, Probennehmer
• Applicant Institution: Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
• Leader: Professor Dr. Elmar Wolf