7 October, 2009 – Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) and Tecan Group AG (SIX Swiss Exchange: TECN) announced today their intent to co-market a new automated sample preparation system for the analysis of amino acids. The system, based on the Tecan’s Freedom EVO® liquid handling technology, is designed to complement Waters® UPLC® Amino Acid Analysis and MassTrak™ Amino Acid Analysis Solutions. Combining the technologies enables scientists to streamline the analysis of amino acids – in protein hydrolysates, cell culture media and food/feed samples, or, urine/plasma samples (for clinical research use only).

“It’s clear to us that by automating the derivatisation protocols for amino acid analysis, we can save scientists much time and effort by mitigating the predominant source of sample error – the manual sample preparation process,” said Mary Ellen Goffredo, senior director, systems product marketing for the Waters Division. “In terms of overall productivity, the advantages of leveraging UPLC together with automated sample handling are very compelling, particularly for organisations that require the highest levels of laboratory-to-laboratory accuracy and consistency in results.”

“Manually driven amino acid analysis can be laborious, error-prone and time-consuming. Since time is money, by combining our expertise in automated liquid handling with Waters’ in separation sciences, we want our customers to be in the best position possible to reduce errors, lower costs, be more efficient and achieve their scientific and business goals”, said Kevin Moore, market manager for drug discovery at Tecan.

Waters ACQUITY® UPLC technology combined with Waters AccQ•Tag™ Ultra derivatisation and separation chemistry is proven technology for the accurate and precise qualitative and quantitative measurement of amino acids with exceptional resolution, sensitivity, and speed. Automating the front end sample derivatisation process with Tecan technology promises to bring laboratories new levels of efficiency.