Five minutes of hands-on bench time now separates researchers from purified plasmid DNA using a new automated system from Thermo Fisher Scientific. The company’s cartridge-based KingFisher PlasmidPro automates the traditionally hours-long maxi-prep process.
The KingFisher PlasmidPro benchtop instrument offers walk-away operation. Kevin Lowitz, vice president and general manager for sample prep at Thermo Fisher Scientific, described the user experience as akin to a “‘set it and forget it’ type of experience.” Researchers add their culture to a pre-filled cartridge, load it into the system, and press start. “One of the initial reactions we get is, ‘Is that it? It’s really that simple?'”
Thermo Fisher states the KingFisher PlasmidPro yields purified plasmid DNA suitable for applications such as gene therapy development, sequencing, and vaccine research in under 75 minutes.
Busy labs vying to reclaim scientist time
Kevin Lowitz
For Lowitz, this automation addresses a long-familiar chore. He recalls, albeit not fondly, first-hand manual plasmid purification work. “Generating plasmid DNA is mainly for cloning purposes and screening different clones,” Lowitz explained. The process is “really tedious,” he said. If you’ve ever watched it in a lab or had the unfortunate pleasure of doing it, you have to bring this nasty-smelling culture into the lab, then precipitate the pellet, then lyse and burst open the cells, isolate the DNA, and separate it.”
And according to Lowitz, it’s a method that had seen little change for decades. He explained that he came to fully appreciate the extent of customer reliance on this basic molecular biology step, noting its frequent use by both academic and large pharma customers.
The potential for time savings is significant, according to Lowitz. He estimates that a lab running ten plasmid purification preps a week could save “on the order of a couple thousand hours” annually. Such savings, he suggested, could approach the working hours of a full-time equivalent (FTE) or one scientist. Lowitz mentioned that some biopharma customers run 50 to 100 preps a day, suggesting even greater potential productivity gains in such settings.
Ensuring reliable results and high-quality DNA
While efficiency is one advantage, enhanced consistency is another. Manual plasmid purification is also “very inconsistent because you have so much manual intervention,” Lowitz said. “By automating the process, it does reduce that variability significantly,” which can lead to cost savings by minimizing the need to repeat experiments.
Customer validation supports these claims. “Our customers are validating [quality] as they run it on a gel or through sequencing, or transfection results would confirm that,” Lowitz noted. According to Thermo Fisher data, routine runs with the KingFisher PlasmidPro produce plasmid yields and purity on par with manual maxi-prep kits—typically yielding high double-digit microgram quantities with A260/A280 ratios around 1.8 and A260/A230 ratios near 2.0. Labs have confirmed the output by gel analysis, sequencing, and successful transfections.
Customers have run both low- and high-copy plasmids through the unit, followed by full transfection tests, and report high-quality, mostly supercoiled DNA suitable for demanding downstream applications. Researchers are “really pushing the limit with it,” Lowitz said. Some users, for instance, are “confirming that it is generating high-quality supercoiled DNA that they can use for downstream vaccine production or protein production.” Thermo Fisher data also demonstrates the workflow’s ability to preserve a high percentage of the critical supercoiled DNA. The company states that for applications requiring utmost purity, optional endotoxin-removal cartridges can reduce endotoxin levels to below 0.1 EU/µg.
Labs strapped for cash and time are eyeing automation to keep projects moving. “These researchers, many of whom are doing really groundbreaking discoveries, don’t want to spend their time—and actually, they’re expensive resources—on a step like this,” Lowitz observes. Automating tedious tasks “opens up opportunities to be a lot more productive and apply that talent in more important ways in the lab and advancing research.”
Demand for high-purity plasmid DNA keeps climbing, thanks to sustained interest in mRNA, cell and gene therapy, and antibodies. “The demand for high-quality DNA is only increasing,” Lowitz confirms, “and to do it at scale is a real challenge right now.”
Adoption varies by sector and budget reality
Academic labs like the idea of shaving bench time, but many face constraints to limit spending. “If you talk to academic customers, especially in the U.S., many of them are constrained with their budgets. So on one hand, a solution like this is timely because it’s offering some operational savings for them,” Lowitz explains. “On the other hand, in an academic environment, a postdoc or a lab tech is less costly than in a biotech or pharma company, so the urgency to buy something like this in academia is perhaps not as high as it once was.” Still, the allure of significant operational gains can make the investment worthwhile for some.
Like academic labs, biotech and pharma firms are feeling a financial squeeze, too, but for these teams, the constant high volume of work alters the financial calculus. The significant time savings offered by automation become a crucial factor. “So the value proposition of saving time, and frankly, operator time, is resonating for them because they can bring a technology like this in to help with some of the constraints they have on resources,” Lowitz explains. “For them, the workload doesn’t change. The volume is still there. The need to generate vaccines quickly, or antibodies, it’s still there.”
Interest is global. “Our indications from customer outreach are really encouraging as far as how many customers this is resonating with,” Lowitz states. “And this is on a global scale. It’s not just in the U.S.; we’re seeing it in Europe. Interestingly, we’ve had a lot of interest in APJ [Asia-Pacific Japan], in regions like Korea and Japan.”
Roadmap: Larger plasmids, GMP, gene-therapy scale
Thermo Fisher is looking to expand the platform’s capabilities. “What we’re really focused on now is how do we extend the applications of this?” Lowitz reveals, adding that they aim to “optimize protocols for a lot more flexibility so they can really apply this to a range of different conditions depending on the size of their plasmid, the type of buffer they’re using.” He noted that such customer interest shows “the need is there” and that “they want to really see us extend the utility of it to other areas of their research.”
Lowitz acknowledges competition but emphasizes differentiation. “There are other semi-automated solutions out there today from some of our competitors, but they don’t offer the full walk-away solution that ours does when you think about maxi-scale production,” Lowitz said. Early customer feedback supports this positioning: “Our customers who are trying it have also used some of the other automation and are seeing the benefits of our system,” Lowitz notes.
Filed Under: Biotech, Cell & gene therapy, Omics/sequencing
