Waters™ Biosciences (formerly BD Biosciences) partnered with HighRes® to bring large-scale lab automation to development and characterization of research reagents for flow cytometry. In this session, the Waters Biosciences Innovative Core Solutions team shares how a fully automated work cell, built around a Hamilton liquid handler, dual ACell™ robotic arms, flow cytometers, including a BD FACSLyric™ Flow Cytometer, along with integrated incubation, centrifugation, and plate washing, transformed a manual, bottlenecked reagent-testing process into a high-throughput, round-the-clock operation.
This session gives lab leaders considering automation a candid look at the collaboration required to get there: the technical build, the training and knowledge-transfer model that keeps protocols running consistently, and the business case that justifies expanding automation investment.
Video 1. The Waters Innovative Core Solutions team and HighRes built an automated flow cytometry work cell with unattended overnight acquisition. Here are the design decisions, lessons, and results.
Flow cytometry produces statistically robust data in minutes. Getting a plate to the cytometer is the slow part. Each sample passes through antibody dilution, staining, incubation, and washing, and many of those steps are time-sensitive and must run in sequence.
The Innovative Core Solutions team at Waters develops and tests antibody reagents for flow cytometry. They needed to test more reagent candidates without adding people, shifts, or operator-to-operator variability. In a recent webinar with HighRes, they walked through how they did it. The recording is below.
Adding staff increases capacity, but it also adds handoffs and makes consistency harder to manage across shifts. The team saw that the science was complex but the execution was highly repeatable. That made the workflow a strong candidate for automation.
Most steps already had proven automation: dilution preparation, sample handling, incubation, and plate washing. The remaining gap was flow cytometer acquisition. If a scientist still had to load plates, configure settings, and start each run, overnight operation wasn’t truly unattended.
The BD FACSLyric™ Flow Cytometer together with FACSuite software and the automation API supports assay-specific acquisition templates. Scientists define them in advance, and the instrument applies the right settings to each plate automatically. That allows sequential processing of multiple plates across different experiments with minimal interaction.
The team started with operational requirements: continuous execution, precise timing between steps, overnight operation, and room to scale. Then they worked backward to the architecture.
HighRes built the work cell around devices the team already used or knew well, including a Hamilton Vantage liquid handler, a Thermo incubator, and a plate washer. Because the Rotanta centrifuge requires a plate to be lowered into its nest, the cell uses two HighRes ACell™ robots: one travels on a rail and reaches most devices and the second is dedicated to the centrifuge.
Before any physical build, the team modeled the SOP in Cellario Scheduler™ scheduling software. A functional simulation let them confirm the design, tune timing, and see device utilization. That showed whether another washer or centrifuge was needed to hit target throughput.
The BD FACSLyric was added to the cell after the original design. It wasn’t built for automation, so HighRes and the BD engineering team worked through mechanical and software challenges together. One example: a manual lid was removed from the workflow, and the instrument was rewired internally so it would run without it. HighRes also built a driver and API integration for Cellario®. The result is a working driver for the BD FACSLyric that other HighRes customers can use without repeating the development work.
For the team’s titration testing workflow, which determines optimal reagent concentrations:
Waters sees the value as capability as much as capacity. Studies can include more test points or run across multiple days.
The team is adding robotic resources, integrating more cytometers and HighRes FlexPods® and extending the cell to new assay endpoints. They now treat automation as a long-term operating model rather than a one-time project.
Watch the full webinar above, or get in touch to talk about automating your flow cytometry workflow.