Liquid handlers are ubiquitous and essential tools in every aspect of the drug discovery arena. Innovations in the past few decades resulted in a sizeable array of devices. With so many choices, it is important to identify appropriate instrumentation for a particular screening strategy, which should be based on unique capabilities and limitations.
Intense advances in the design of liquid handling devices have broadened the capabilities to screen larger collections of compounds at a faster pace with increased reliability and efficiency. These innovations drift towards miniaturisation, in large part to reduce cost and increase throughput. A wide selection of fluid handlers has been developed for every aspect of drug discovery, which incorporate different technologies for discrete functions. Although this segment focuses on instrumentation relevant to the screening of small organic molecules, the perspectives presented herein can be valuable in the handling of oligonucleotides or biologics.
Liquid handlers can be broadly categorised as bulk dispensers or transfer devices, depending on whether large volumes of a single reagent are being distributed or smaller quantities are being transferred1. In addition, these instruments can follow two dispensing modes: contact or non-contact, depending on whether the fluid to be transferred is allowed to touch the surface of the destination container or solution2. Based on the delivery mechanism, they include tip-, piezoelectric-, solenoid- and acoustic-based devices in addition to peristaltic pumps and pin-transfer3:
