Nexxus Scotland

Lab901 and the ScreenTape System

Lab901 is a growing technology company within the global life sciences sector. As developer and manufacturer of a revolutionary, automated bio-molecular analysis platform known as the ScreenTape System, launched in 2007, the company has rapidly expanded to employ nearly 50 staff, mainly scientists and engineers, at their base in Loanhead near Edinburgh.

Even during the tough times of 2009, the quality of its product offering meant that Lab901 was able to successfully raise £2.4m in equity funding from a consortium of UK investors, including Archangel Informal Investment Ltd, Alliance Trust Equity Partners, Scottish Enterprise SVF, Foresight 3 VCT plc and Tricapital Ltd. The company also has a growing
number of prestigious customers across a wide range of academic, scientific and medical institutions,
as well as major bio-pharma companies. Recent adopters of ScreenTape technology include ESBATech, Crucell, Symphogen, Bayer Healthcare and Novartis Basel.

Very often in scientific discovery, the best ideas come from the ability to blend a wide variety of disciplines. So it was for Lab901, the brainchild of Stuart Polwart and Joel Fearnley, former colleagues at Motorola in Bathgate, who teamed up with scientists Professor Peter Ghazal and Dr Douglas Roy to develop the original concept and patent the technology. With previous experience as automation specialists in electronics manufacturing, Stuart and Joel were able to adapt their combined expertise to address workflow bottlenecks within the life science laboratory. This led to the idea behind Lab901's innovative ScreenTape System, an automated platform for the separation of
complex mixtures of bio-molecules, used in a wide range of analytical applications.

The ScreenTape system comprises a consumable - ScreenTape, an instrument - the TapeStation, and a choice of software packages for research and diagnostics. The design of ScreenTape and the TapeStation relied on a team of specialists at Lab901 consisting of molecular biologists, biochemists and polymer scientists, as well as mechanical design, electronic and software engineers. One of the reasons the team find Scotland such a fertile base is that Scotland has a plentiful supply of highly qualified individuals across a wide range of disciplines who work well together in the development of novel technologies.

ScreenTape provides a fast, compact and convenient solution for the automated electrophoresis of DNA, RNA and protein. The DNA ScreenTape range has a wide applicability in clinical laboratories within the molecular diagnostics market. In addition, the system is also used in a wide range of research and development activities within Universities, pharma
and bioprocessing. The RNA ScreenTape is initially targeted at RNA quality control and provides the user with an objective metric for assessing total RNA degradation. ScreenTape for proteins delivers fast and accurate results, meaning that complex protein purification workflows can be streamlined and accelerated.

Richard Rowling, Sales and Marketing Director at Lab901 said, "By using ScreenTape, our customers can achieve considerable time savings and efficiency gains. On multiple protein and antibody analysis, SDS-PAGE and full analysis can be completed within minutes instead of hours. This is particularly important to customers who are constantly seeking to achieve more with fewer resources.

"The protein ScreenTape system can offer fully automated SDS-PAGE and analysis in under one minute per sample. Users are provided with a gel image, electropherogram and information such as molecular weight, percentage purity and quantity in a fraction of the time needed when using traditional pre-cast gel methods.

"ScreenTape comes fully pre-packaged with reagents and contains 16 discrete sample separation channels, providing better reproducibility and ensuring no sample carryover or cross contamination. Uniquely, unused lanes on ScreenTape can be used for subsequent experiments, making the system much more costeffective than pre-cast gels or microfluidic labchip devices."

Richard adds, "One of ScreenTape's main attractions is the fact that, as a single instrument platform, it has multiple application capabilities. The system is particularly effective in analysing samples of infection which might indicate a full epidemic is pending. It's the sheer speed and versatility of ScreenTape that cuts out hours of detailed analysis in a single run."

One client in Korea uses ScreenTape to test for respiratory viruses, including avian and swine flu, and Lab901 are able to automate the analysis of these tests so that results are delivered within minutes. Given the urgency that can be associated with these conditions, this helps in controlling the spread of infection by ensuring that patients are treated more quickly. As a result of this versatility, the ScreenTape system has already established a strong market foothold in clinical and research facilities across Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Joel Fearnley, CEO and co-founder of Lab901, says that the company is now turning its attention to the US market, "Having successfully proved the strong demand for ScreenTape products in the rest of the world, the time is now right for us to start focusing our attentions on the USA, which accounts for approximately 50% of the global market."

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