Liquid reagents require cold chain transportation and low-temperature storage, with high transportation and storage costs, harsh conditions, unstable performance, and short shelf life. However, freeze-dried bead balls have many advantages, and with the reduction of production costs brought about by mass production in the future, they will undoubtedly contribute to the explosive growth of IVD rapid diagnosis. The preservation of IVD industry reagents is a major challenge in the medical industry. Biological reagents are bioactive substances that are particularly sensitive to temperature. The chemical properties are relatively active and easy to react with each other. Due to the above characteristics, the storage time of biological reagents is generally short and requires frozen storage, otherwise they will quickly deteriorate. In addition, many biological reagents (such as nucleic acid testing reagents) require storage at room temperature, which means that biological reagents cannot be stored in liquid form and need to be dehydrated. The methods for dehydration of reagents generally include: 1. Glue drying; 2. Liquid nitrogen freeze-drying bead dot ball technology.
Glue drying uses heating drying technology to evaporate the moisture in the reagent through vacuum high-temperature heating. But this simple dehydration method has significant drawbacks. High temperature may have an impact on enzymes and proteins, and they are relatively difficult to dissolve. Freeze dried bead technology uses freeze-drying technology to dehydrate reagents. Freeze dried bead technology can maintain the activity of enzymes/proteins to the greatest extent possible, and the freeze-dried beads have a loose mesh structure and rapid reconstitution. Freeze dried bead technology can convert unstable chemical reagents into high-quality, stable, and quantitative freeze-dried bead beads.
The liquid ammonia freeze-drying bead technology involves dropping reagent liquid into a device storing liquid nitrogen, allowing it to solidify into small balls in a very short period of time at low temperatures. Liquid nitrogen, also known as liquid nitrogen, is an inert (non reactive with other substances), colorless, odorless, non corrosive, non flammable, and extremely low-temperature liquid. Its excellent properties and reasonable price determine that liquid ammonia is an ideal low-temperature freezing medium. After the liquid drops into liquid fluorine and forms balls, it can be freeze-dried using a cost-effective ordinary freeze dryer, and pressure control is required during this process. At present, the main technical difficulty of freeze-drying beads with liquid nitrogen lies in the point liquid:
1. Trace point solution: Liquid nitrogen freeze-dried beads generally require trace point solution, with common amounts ranging from 1 microliter (1 milligram) to 10 microliters. It is difficult for ordinary pumps that people are familiar with to maintain consistent liquid levels in such a small range.
2. Precision point solution: Freeze dried beads require high precision and shape for the point solution. When operating in the laboratory, it is often difficult to control accuracy and consistency due to manual consistency issues and simple equipment. If a regular pump is used, the controllability and accuracy of the pump are poor when handling trace amounts of liquid, which can easily result in uneven ball shapes, poor ball formation, or multiple microspheres exploding when the ball falls onto the surface of liquid ammonia. When the amount of liquid is small, it cannot form uniformly shaped spheres, and when the amount is large, freeze-dried beads are difficult to dissolve. If the shape and size of the freeze-dried beads of the product are inconsistent, it will affect the subsequent testing process and results.
To solve the above-mentioned problem of micro fluid point liquid, the technical team of Dongguan Jike Automation Technology Co., Ltd. has been focusing on the research and development of micro (microliter level and nanoliter level) fluid control systems since 2019, with a focus on micro liquid point liquids at microliter level and nanoliter level. Based on micro fluid pump technology, they have successively launched multiple liquid ammonia freeze-drying bead and ball systems suitable for laboratory/small batch production and large-scale production.
The liquid ammonia freeze-drying bead system adopts precision micro ceramic pump technology with a point liquid volume as low as 1 microliter. The components in contact with the liquid medicine are pharmaceutical grade sapphire grade ceramics, PTFE, and 16 stainless steel materials, which do not react with the liquid medicine, thus ensuring the activity, stability, and contamination of the liquid medicine. The dispensing volume and dispensing speed can be quickly adjusted, and the company can customize various special needles to achieve precise dispensing without dripping or bursting when dispensing into liquid nitrogen. The freeze-dried beads have good circular effect, uniform shape and volume, and consistent size, effectively solving the problems commonly faced by biochemical customers such as easy dripping or bursting of freeze-dried beads, inaccurate accuracy, poor ball forming effect, and poor consistency. Gickel has a variety of specifications of micro ceramic pumps to choose from, with high-precision liquid dispensing ranging from as low as 1 microliter to tens of microliters or more. The liquid dispensing accuracy can reach up to 0:5%, which can meet various liquid dispensing requirements of customers.