Eskitis Institute at Griffith University Has Chosen Evotec Technologies’ Opera™ as HCS Platform

28 June 2006, Hamburg, Germany | Queensland, Australia – Evotec Technologies GmbH, a supplier of innovative tools and technologies for life sciences and pharmaceutical drug discovery, and the Eskitis Institute, Griffith University, today announced the installation of an Opera™ system as a platform to provide Eskitis’ with high-content screening (HCS).

With almost 40 installations today the Opera™ has become the most prominent system for combining high-throughput screening with high content analysis. The Opera™ combines the precision of confocal microscopy with the speed of primary screening instrumentation.

“We are extremely proud to be chosen by Eskitis as technology provider. We see an increasing demand for fully automated microscopy in academia research to cope with the high throughput experimentation requirements of modern cell biology research. The Opera™ is the ideal tool for such purpose because it provides true confocality and the desired speed plus great flexibility with respect to options and upgrades, e. g. excitation / emission combinations, imaging magnification, on-board dispensing, environmental control, or plate handling,” stated Dr. Günter Bauer, CBO at Evotec Technologies GmbH.

“The Opera™ will further enhance the capabilities of Eskitis in the area of high content cell biology by providing a platform that will enable research into cellular functions at a speed and throughput not previously available to Australian researchers. It is also an important advance in the drug discovery process as it is able to provide multiple readouts on how a potential drug may effect the growth and function of a cell,” comments Professor Ron Quinn, Professor & Director of Eskitis Institute for Cell and Molecular Therapies, Griffith University.



About Eskitis Institute for Cell and Molecular Therapies, Griffith University
The Eskitis Institute was formed in 2003 and undertakes research in areas of neu-roscience, neurobiology, cancer biology, structural chemistry, medicinal chemistry and molecular architecture and drug discovery. The Eskitis Institute will be estab-lishing a second laboratory at the Brisbane Innovation Park, adjacent to the Griffith University Nathan campus during 2006.
Research focuses (i) on the development of cell therapies building on pioneering work to harvest and cultivate nasal cells for transplantation for spinal cord regen-eration and (ii) on the development of small molecules from natural products and synthetic libraries against a range of therapeutic targets.
The Natural Product Discovery work was established as a result of a collaboration in 1993 with the former Astra (which has been continued with AstraZeneca) to find natural product leads that may be able to be developed into therapeutic drugs. The natural product extract library is comprised of greater than 72,000 extracts, which is continually growing in number and diversity. Aside from plants from Tropical North Queensland, the library consists of plant extracts from Papua New Guinea and China, plus a wide range of marine samples collected primarily throughout Austra-lia. The partnership between pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and Griffith Uni-versity is one of the most successful public/private partnerships in Australia.
The Opera™ was part funded by the Australian Research Council through a Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities Grant between the Eskitis Institute, Griffith University and the Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland.

About Evotec Technologies
Evotec Technologies GmbH, subsidiary of Evotec AG, is the world’s leading provider of confocal detection devices (Opera™, Clarina™, Insight Cell), cell handling devices (CytoClone™, Cytocon™) and ultra-High-Throughput Screening (uHTS) systems (EVOscreen®, plate::explorer™). The Company’s product portfolio is focused on high-end technologies for automated cell biology. Its outstanding expertise in detection coupled with sophisticated automation skills, integrating hardware, software and bioware modules, makes the Company a clear leader for automated cell analysis. Evotec Technologies employs 80 people, primarily at its main site in Hamburg, Germany. www.evotec-technologies.com

Contact Information

Dr. Günter Bauer

Evotec Technologies GmbH

Contact via E-mail