- Prize-winning sample processing platform will feature at American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting
- Red Dot recognizes EZ2® Connect’s excellence in design and innovation for enhanced ease-of-use
- Combining EZ2® Connect and QIAGEN’s digital PCR instrument QIAcuity® boosts the fight against cancer
Hilden, Germany, and Germantown, Maryland, April 7, 2022 – QIAGEN today announced that EZ2® Connect, its next-generation instrument for sample preparation, has won the prestigious Red Dot award, one of the world’s longest running and most important design competitions. The jury’s decision is due recognition of the instrument’s extraordinary design quality and innovation of the instrument.
Processing cancer research samples, such as liquid biopsies (cfDNA, CTCs) and FFPE tissues, can be a challenging endeavor and automated solutions often still required various manual processing steps. With EZ2® Connect, QIAGEN has developed an easy-to-use, fully automated system making sample processing as convenient as possible for cancer researchers. The instrument can purify DNA and RNA from up to 24 samples in parallel, in as little as 20 minutes. It uses prefilled reagent-cartridges to boost reproducibility and convenience, and connects to the QIAsphere cloud, a digital laboratory ecosystem that enables additional remote features like instrument management and real-time status reporting. In short, EZ2® Connect contributes to the optimization of workflows and greater lab productivity.
“We are honored to receive a product design award that recognizes our success in making work easier for scientists worldwide,“ said Dr. Thomas Schweins, Senior Vice President and Head of QIAGEN’s Life Sciences Business Area. “And we are looking forward to engaging with leaders in cancer research at AACR 2022, and to further driving our commitment in this field.”
Since the instrument’s launch in July 2021, the range of kits has been continuously expanded to offer automated DNA and RNA isolation for all kinds of cancer research samples. With the latest launch of the EZ2 RNA/miRNA Tissue/Cells Kit in February 2022, all relevant sample types can now be processed on the EZ® Connect. All EZ2 kits come with easy-to-use cartridges and magnetic-bead separation technology.
Furthermore, the combination of high-volume sample processing on the EZ2 Connect® with sensitive ultra-low mutation detection using the QIAcuity®, QIAGEN’s digital PCR platform (dPCR), builds a powerful workflow for highest reproducibility, process safety and standardization. This further streamlines biomarker profiling from liquid biopsies and FFPE samples. The QIAcuity® integrates all steps of a downstream dPCR reaction into a walk-away platform, generating results in about two hours and thus setting new standards compared to the five hours required by other systems. The platform disperses a sample over thousands of tiny nanoplate partitions and then simultaneously reads the reaction in each one. This enables it to quantify even the faintest signals from DNA, RNA and proteins as it tests for viruses, bacteria or other disorders, including rare cancer mutations.
The prize-winning EZ2® Connect will be featured at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2022 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, before being officially honored at the award ceremony on June 20, 2022, in Essen, Germany. QIAGEN will also present the QIAcuity® digital PCR system and other highlights of its broad offering for Life Sciences, and cancer research in particular, at booth #1649 during this year’s AACR from April 8-13, 2022.
For more information about QIAGEN’s automation offering for cancer research please visit www.qiagen.com/de/applications/cancer-research/automation.
About QIAGEN
QIAGEN N.V., a Netherlands-based holding company, is the leading global provider of Sample to Insight solutions that enable customers to gain valuable molecular insights from samples containing the building blocks of life. Our sample technologies isolate and process DNA, RNA and proteins from blood, tissue and other materials. Assay technologies make these biomolecules visible and ready for analysis. Bioinformatics software and knowledge bases interpret data to report relevant, actionable insights. Automation solutions tie these together in seamless and cost-effective workflows. QIAGEN provides solutions to more than 500,000 customers around the world in Molecular Diagnostics (human healthcare), Applied Testing (primarily forensics), Pharma (pharma and biotech companies) and Academia (life sciences research). As of December 31, 2021, QIAGEN employed more than 6,000 people in over 35 locations worldwide. Further information can be found at http://www.qiagen.com.
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