There were over three billion biochemical assays performed in the United States, European Union and Japan in 2000 that cost over $24 billion(B) to perform. Most were done in 96 or 384 well plates in 50-299 microliter(uL) volumes. These relatively large volumes necessitate the creation of extensive infrastructures for generating, storing and disposing of the required reagents and labware. Attendant problems include evaporation, air bubbles, long incubation times and reagent stability all of which limit boththroughput and quality of data.

Nanolytics' proprietary technology eliminates all of these problems. We provide an open platform for controlling precisely the dispensing, movement and positioning of nanoliter scale droplets (nanodroplets). Theextant platform consists of a biochip containing 10,000 "virtual" wells each of which defines a nanodroplet, and a computer-controlled microactuator to move and position the nanodroplets independently. "Open platform" means it is compatible with any current assay protocol, it is capable of running multiple protocols on the same chip and it can be reconfigured "on-the-fly". The use of nanodroplets means that compared to that of traditional plates, assay density is increased by 50-200 fold, incubation times are decreased by 100 fold, and all reagents can be decreased by 1000 fold. These advantages mean that assay throughput is increased 5,000-20,000 fold. Coupled with the fact that our platform is compatible with existing assay facilities and instrumentation, it is clear that Nanolytics has the ability to change dramatically the way all assays will be done for the foreseeable future.