Combinatorial chemistry

Phase separator

The Lollipop Phase Separator from Radley's (Essex, UK) is designed for the purification of organic and aqueous phases from a two-phase mixture. Its principle is the rapid freezing of the aqueous phase, postsynthesis, within arrays of either 96 or 24 tubes, and its attachment to chemically resistant PEEK pins, forming frozen “lollipops,” allowing for separation from any nonmiscible organic liquid phase. Tube support frames are compatible with GeneVac vacuum centrifuges for a first-step evaporation of the reaction solvent when a miscible organic solvent is used. http://www.radleys.co.uk  http://www.genevac.com 

HPLC detector

Polymer Laboratories' (Shropshire, UK) PL-ELS 1000 is a high-sensitivity evaporative light-scattering HPLC detector for high-throughput screening of combinatorial chemistry libraries. It can detect compounds with no UV chromophore and is ideally suited to rapid separations using extreme gradients, as the baseline does not respond to changes in eluent composition; therefore stable baselines are observed throughout each analysis. The PL-ELS 1000 requires no additional equilibration time for the signal to return to the starting point, increasing its high-throughput capabilities.  http://www.polymerlabs.com 

Enzymes & reagents

Cell viability kit

The Cell Viability HitKit from Cellomics (Pittsburgh, PA) contains the reagents and optimized assay protocol for quantifying the number and percentage of live and dead cells, as well as total cell counts in populations of cells growing on standard high-density microplates or microscope slides. Within the context of Cellomics' ArrayScan system, an automated fluorescence screening platform, the kit enables cytotoxic drug effects to be quantified in less than 2 h after drug treatment. The kit is also useful for research applications using a fluorescent microscope. http://www.cellomics.com  

Caspase activity detection kit

Intergen's (Purchase, NY) CaspaTag Fluorescein Caspase Activity Kit is the first of its kind to detect active caspases in living cells. CaspaTag utilizes FAM-VAD-FMK, a derivative of the potent, broad-spectrum caspase inhibitor zVAD-FMK, designed to detect the onset of apoptosis and/or pro-inflammatory response based upon caspase activation. http://www.intergenco.com  

Nucleic acid detection system

The UltraSNAP (Biotin) Detection System uses alkaline phosphatase and Vector's (Burlingame, CA) DuoLuX substrate for chemiluminescent or fluorescent detection of biotinylated DNA–RNA probes. The system contains specially formulated reagents optimized to provide high sensitivity with low background in Southern or northern hybridization, dot blot, plaque, or colony screening. Sufficient reagents are supplied for the development of approximately 20 blots of 100 cm2 each. http://www.vectorlabs.com

Selection software

MDL Information Systems' (San Leandro, CA) Reagent Selector version 1.2 is an integrated tool for selecting, locating, and obtaining reagents from in-house inventories, and shopping for reagents from databases of commercial suppliers. It provides access to country- or company-specific supplier price lists, as well as local currency conversions. Using the software, users can pull thousands of reagents from in-house and commercial databases, and with an array of filtering and clustering tools, group them into lists that become the basis for combinatorial libraries. Reagent Selector easily integrates with inventory management and purchasing systems. http://www.mdli.com  

Signal transduction reagents

BIOMOL (Ply-mouth Meeting, PA) offers over 1,300 signal transduction products, including a full line of bioactive lipids and neuropharmacologics, enzymes, inhibitors, antibodies, and assay kits. Its new catalog also features expanded sections on apoptosis, nitric oxide, and phosphorylation research, current literature references, and application notes. http://www.biomol.com