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Competition winners pioneer animal-free toxicity screening

INTEGRA Biosciences has awarded 31 EVOLVE manual pipettes, GRIPTIPS®pipette tips worth US $1000, and lab accessories to the bioanalytical company DNTOX as part of its recent ‘INTEGRA supports start-ups’ competition, which ran until April 2023. The pipettes will greatly streamline the company’s neurotoxicological hazard assessments, helping to increase its testing capacity and advance research in this vital area.

DNTOX – based in Düsseldorf, Germany – specializes in chemical neurotoxicity testing and was founded in 2022 to assess the potential for environmental, pharmaceutical and dietary compounds to disturb the developing or adult human brain. The start-up’s neurotoxicity testing portfolio includes the proprietary Neurosphere Assay and AI software, which offer affordable and animal-free in vitro screening methods for assessing chemical neurotoxicity within only 5-6 weeks. 

The young company is currently setting up its own independent laboratory space, and is planning to hire several additional employees in the near future, so had an urgent need for multiple new liquid handling instruments. It therefore applied to the ‘INTEGRA supports start-ups’ competition, and received 31 single and multichannel EVOLVE manual pipettes, GRIPTIPS pipette tips and lab accessories to allow accurate pipetting of volumes from 0.2 to 5000 μl. The DNTOX team will use the pipettes for plating 2D and 3D cell models in 96 well plates and for performing immunocytochemical staining and washing protocols, with several single and multichannel instruments of different volumes allocated to each liquid handling step and user. This will help to avoid cross contamination and allow team members to work in parallel for greater testing throughput and time efficiency.

Dr Kristina Bartmann, Co-founder of DNTOX and Head of Research and Development, said: “Winning the EVOLVE pipettes and ECO rack GRIPTIPS from INTEGRA is a huge encouragement to our team. They will drastically speed up our liquid handling workflows and increase our overall testing capacity, supporting us in our aim to better protect developing and adult brains from neurotoxicological damage, as well as eliminate the use of animals in neurotoxicity testing; goals the DNTOX team is very passionate about.”

Read more about DNTOX and how it will use INTEGRA’s liquid handling solutions.

About INTEGRA Biosciences

INTEGRA Biosciences is a leading provider of high-quality laboratory tools and consumables for liquid handling and media preparation. The company is committed to creating innovative solutions which fulfil the needs of its customers in research, diagnostics and quality control within the life sciences markets and medical sector. Today, INTEGRA innovative laboratory products are widely used all around the world. More than 100 distribution partners form a worldwide sales network providing responsive and competent services to customers. These distribution partners are supported by a highly motivated and experienced team of specialists at the company headquarters in Zizers, Switzerland and Hudson, NH, USA. INTEGRA is an ISO 9001 certified company.

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