QIAGEN announced the 2,500th placement of QIAsymphony, a sample-to-result workflow automation solution for molecular laboratories worldwide. Cenata, based in Germany, is a medically led genetic diagnostic laboratory offering prenatal testing, and repeat customer of the QIAsymphony, purchasing this milestone QIAsymphony SP as the third unit in their lab, expanding capabilities for circulating DNA purification and other applications.
“The QIAsymphony in our lab is in near-constant use,” explains Dr. Karina Häbig, Scientific Coordinator of Cenata GmbH in Germany. “For our non-invasive prenatal testing applications, especially the Harmony Test, it gives us consistent results with automation, while lowering our hands-on time and ensuring quality.”
QIAGEN is also launching the new QIAsymphony PowerFecal Pro DNA Kit to automate the gold standard microbiome sample prep kit. Extracting microbiome DNA from gut, stool and soil samples can be difficult. These sample types often contain high levels of substances like heme, lipids and polysaccharides which cloud true quantities of DNA, creating results that may not reflect actual biodiversity. The new QIAsymphony PowerFecal Pro DNA Kit uses patented Inhibitor Removal Technology (IRT) to clean impurities from samples and reveal the DNA of a more diverse population of bacteria and fungi.
The QIAsymphony PowerFecal Pro DNA Kit offers:
• Efficient lysis of bacteria and fungi in all stool and soil samples
• Automating the procedure on the QIAsymphony SP for reproducible medium to high throughput purification of DNA
• Recovering inhibitor-free DNA, ready to use directly in downstream next-generation sequencing (NGS) applications
• Achieving unbiased results that accurately represent sample alpha diversity
QIAsymphony was first launched as a stand-alone sample processing unit in 2008. Since then, it has been expanded with new modules for assay setup and detection to run a growing menu of kits for a nearly unlimited number of applications in oncology, genetics testing, infectious disease and human ID, enabling customers in life sciences and diagnostics to gain valuable insights from their samples.