Products >> Drug Discovery & Screening >> Instruments >> Ca⁺² Screening >> NOVOstar
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NOVOstar - Cell-based fast kinetic microplate reader with integrated liquid transfer for rapidly screening up to 384 different analytes

In the past, cell-based assays required the use of expensive HTS equipment, which lead to limited accessibility for scientists in the assay development stage. In order to reduce this bottleneck, BMG LABTECH developed the NOVOstar, an exciting microplate reader for screening a large number of compounds in fast kinetic, cell-based assays and research development. The NOVOstar is a compact microplate reader offering five detection modes in a unique combination with an integrated pipettor system for automated assembly and instantaneous reading of assays in microplate formats up to 384-well.

	Fluorescence Polarization
	Fluorescence Intensity - including FRET and multilable applications
	Time-Resolved Fluorescence - including DELFIA®
	Absorbance - UV/Vis with path length correction
	High-Performance Luminescence (flash and glow) - DLReadyTM certified

Exceptional Technologies

The NOVOstar has numerous features that cannot be found on other microplate readers including:

	Dual Microplate Carrier: Accommodates one reagent plate and one sample plate, allowing you to rapidly screen up to 384 different analytes in one test run.
	Integrated Pipettor System: The system can be used for plate-to-plate and tube-to-plate liquid transfer, aspirating, dispensing, or mixing fluids within a microplate well. Very small amounts of substance (<1 µL) and individual volumes can be added followed by instantaneous reading.
	Additional Reagent Stations and Reagent Injectors: The pipettor system has access to 3 additional reagent stations (e.g. standard agonist/antagonists, ionophore, washing, etc.) and you can use any of the two injectors for dispensing these and other standard reagents choosing individual volumes for each well.
	User-defined Kinetic Sampling: The NOVOstar is one of the few instruments that can measure kinetic events with a resolution of 20 ms, allowing for calcium uptake assays to be performed with great precision. Furthermore, the control software allows the user to define variable sampling rates throughout the test run so that data evaluation can be simplified.
	Multi-wavelength Detection: NOVOstar uses a xenon flash lamp that allows measurement up to eight excitation/emission pairs in each well. This allows reading of dual excitation fluorophores such as Fura-2 with speed and convenience.
	Precise Temperature Control: The NOVOstar microplate reader incorporates BMG LABTECH's proprietary heating plates situated above and below the entire plate movement area providing for uniform incubation up to 45°C.
	Real-time Data Observation: Assay progress can be observed with the real-time graphics feature showing the measurment data either as a numerical value, color gradient, or X-Y plot.

Applications:

The NOVOstar can be used for all applications that can currently be read by our POLARstar OPTIMA microplate reader. Due to its integrated pipettor system, the NOVOstar is especially well-suited to screen large numbers of compounds in kinetic cell-based assays or to create a dose response curve by measuring a wide range of analyte concentrations.

Applications that the NOVOstar is targeted for include :
 

	Ca2+ uptake
	Membrane potential studies
	Intracellular pH
	Intracellular cAMP, e.g. FRET based assay with CFP
	Measurement of intracellular ionic changes
	Cell proliferation assay, e.g. with Alamar Blue
	Fluorescent reporter gene assays, e.g. GFP, YFP/CFP FRET-based assay
	FRET-based assay, e.g. SUMO protease activity with YFP and enhanced CFP as donor-acceptor pair  FRET-based voltage sensor probes
	Dual Luciferase Reporter Assay, e.g. determination of siRNA silencing efficiency
	Cell adhesion assay, e.g. with calcein AM
	Enzyme activity, e.g. 2-OG hydroxylase enzymes, histone deacetylase inhibition in cancer research
	ELISA

Software

The NOVOstar multidetection microplate reader comes with a new version of BMG LABTECH's established reader control software and completely new and powerful MARS data analysis software. It is compatible with the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating system, offers an extended ASCII data export function and is fully compliant with FDA regulation 21 CFR Part 11.

The familiar and highly visual reader control software allows flexible definition of microplate layouts, filter selection, interval and injection times, as well as measurement frequency, heating, and shaking parameters. During measurement, it is possible to observe the data with the current state view, which allows viewing of raw values, ratios, curves, or even color coded pictorials in real time.

The comprehensive data analysis software - MARS - offers a template manager for building complex data processing protocols and a wizard-guided interface to create easy step-by-step calculations. New features include powerful sort and order functionality; averaging of raw and blank corrected data, lock on data trace, automated or user-defined range adjustment, zoom functions, and a curve fitting library to allow fast calculation of EC₅₀, IC₅₀, r², and CV values.

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