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Dear Readers,Welcome to the latest issue of Microb
The following interesting interview was recently conducted with Steve Knight – commercial director of Ziath now part of Azenta Life Sciences. Ziath is a UK-based company specializing in instrumentation for sample management. Ziath’s primary product range is associated with 2D barcode scanners for tubes held in racks. For further information please contact Steve on [email protected]
Steve Knight: I started out in the scientific instruments’ world – 39 years ago with Shimadzu and Radiometer Copenhagen.
I went on to design spectrophotometers for Pye-Unicam (now Thermo Spectronic) and chromatography accessories for Porvair Sciences. I headed up Porvair’s microplate consumables division for 12 years before transferring to Ziath Ltd as Commercial Director in 2018.
RiTrack Mirage reader with RFID tagged sample rack and tubes.
Steve Knight: Cryogenic storage of samples has been with us for many years, but over the last two decades the sheer numbers of samples in storage has exploded exponentially.
Any small to medium sized Pharma company with a discovery pipeline will typically be storing 2-3 million compounds. The largest multinationals will have 18-20 million compounds in store. So, finding the sample you want in such a storage facility of this size becomes something of a challenge. The advent of 2D-barcoded sample tubes, 20 years ago, had a massive impact on the organisation of these giant sample stores.
Steve Knight: Ziath is continually investing in research and development to improve sample management for Life Science and Pharma organizations. We were the first to introduce a camera-based reader capable of reading all 384 tubes in an SBS format rack and decoding them in just a few seconds.
That was back in 2015. Since then, we have developed technology to work with the widely used larger cryoboxes. and simplified our reader for the SBS format to make it quicker and more economical to own.
Samples being removed from cryogenic storage
Recently we have introduced control software for our readers that you can run on a mobile phone or tablet via your LAN, and we are this year launching a completely portable, battery-powered whole rack reader that you can take to the freezer or sample store.
Steve Knight: Whenever samples come out of long-term cold storage, the racks are covered in frost and ice. This can obscure the barcodes and make it difficult even for the best Ziath readers to decode the tubes. By adding RFID technology to the carrier rack, we can store the rack ID, tube IDs and position of every tube in a 96 well rack on a small RFID chip attached to the rack.
We have patented the design of the chip because it can withstand immersion in vapour-phase liquid nitrogen at -196C and return to room temperature at least ten thousand times without losing any of the stored data.
It is a truly revolutionary device, any phone with Near Field Communication (NFC) built in can read the chip and show you where each tube is located, quickly and easily in front of your freezer.
Steve Knight: To get RiTrack RFID tagging working all you need is a Ziath RiTrack Mirage reader and a supply of our RiTrack RFID tags.
We have designed the tag so that it can be attached to most commercially available SBS-format storage racks> Consequently you do not need to change your existing racks or consumables – just buy a bag of tags from us and using our handy insertion tool, add them to your existing racks.
Innovation – ‘Sample management on the move’
Steve Knight: We are continuing to develop RiTrack technology with the aim of miniaturising the tag further and thereby widening its field of application. You could see these tags being attached to about anything held in a cold store. We have also looked at the food and agriculture market – RiTrack is ideal for tagging whole sides of high-quality meat for example in areas such as the USA where beef must be certified and traceable to the producer. It is a wide-open field right now.
Steve Knight: Azenta is a rapidly growing US$555M company with offices and distribution in most markets worldwide. This global reach will enable us to offer our market leading products and recognised great support in many more countries and help thousands more scientists with their sample management tasks.
Steve Knight- Commercial director of Ziath
