Surface Plasmon Resonance powered by Digital Microfluidics.

Alto is the world’s first digital high-throughput benchtop SPR system to integrate digital microfluidics (DMF), artificial intelligence (AI), and nanotechnology to provide high quality, label-free determination of the equilibrium dissociation constant K_d and the association and dissociation rates K_on / K_off of biochemical interactions with high sample throughput.

• Alto Brochure

DMF technology enables all fluidics to be disposable, allowing for precise handling of 2µL sample volumes, crude sample compatibility and zero maintenance.
Alto’s compatibility with automation for both hardware and software provides sample-in/answer-out data, industry leading throughput and 24/7 runtime.

Digital Microfluidics

DMF is a liquid-handling technology capable of accurately controlling and manipulating discrete nanodroplets with electricity on a standard microwell plate.
DMF fluidic handling technology removes the need for any physical pumps, valves, or tubes and replaces them with a low-cost disposable cartridge, providing higher data quality and less hands-on time.
We have integrated our proprietary localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) sensors into DMF cartridges – creating 16 independently addressable channels on a single cartridge.

Advantages of using DMF-powered SPR

• Full kinetics for bio molecular interactions from only 2μl sample volume
• Automated serial dilutions—reducing human error and saving time
• Decoupling of interaction time from sample volume, increasing assay flexibility
• Decoupling of flow rate and sensor position from dispersion, increasing data quality
• No fluidic pathways in the instrumentation – no pumps, valves or tubes
• No clogging, leaking, or contamination.

Alto Cartridges

Alto Cartridges have completely revolutionized the interaction of fluidics and sensors for SPR.
A Cartridge is a well-plate sized consumable that integrates reagent/sample storage, fluid handling and sensor surfaces. Samples, buffers and reagents are contained in wells on the cartridge, and dispensed towards the sensor in software-controlled nanodroplets.

Precise volumes and automated serially diluted concentrations interface with a fiber optic sensor tip, manufactured with the same quality and consistency (<2% CV) as our existing localized SPR sensors.

Currently we offer our Cartridges with
Carboxyl sensor surface
Anti-HIS (kit)
Protein A (kit)
Streptavidin (kit)

Applications

• Binding Kinetics/Affinity
• Kinetics/Affinity Screening
• Quantitation
• Epitope Mapping/Binning

Compatible With

• Proteins / Peptides
• Antibodies
• Nucleic Acids
• Carbohydrates
• Crude samples
• Viruses
• Small Molecules (application dependent)

Publications

Publications are provided on Nicoya’s webpage.