Big Kahuna Customisable Automation for Biologics, Drug Development & Chemistry
Big Kahuna provides you with the freedom to configure the platform to suit your particular requirements without being hamstrung by designs and parameters dictated by instrument manufacturers. You can modify it to adapt to your workflow, rather than you having to adapt to its workflow. This saves you both time and space, with Big Kahuna being able to take care of everything for you.
Big Kahuna is an automated, high-throughput, end-to-end solution catering to:
Biologics Formulation Development
Big Kahuna is your all-encompassing solution to automated biologics formulation development. It will take care of:
- Buffer preparation
- Buffer exchange
- pH checking
- Sample preparation
- Analysis of formulations
You can even accelerate your studies using the integrated sample incubation and automated freeze/thaw systems. This will allow you to develop and test more screens, examine wider formulations and more quickly find the most stable biologic.
Key Features
- Characterise formulations with limited material
- Developability and preformulation screens
- Robustness and stress studies
- Measure pH, viscosity, turbidity and visible particles
- Manage and track formulations and analytical results
Rapid Formulation Preparation and Evaluation
Big Kahuna is a single, configurable automated platform that allows you to prepare, stress and analyse formulations in parallel. This enables you to screen hundreds of formulations with next to no intervention in only a couple of days.
With everything happening in a single system, reporting and analysis are simplified. The end result is that you can now churn through more candidates and formulation that ever before.
No Need for Dialysis
Big Kahuna eliminates the need for dialysis cassettes, desalting columns and centrifuging that are all required processes in manual formulation preparation. Using as little as 150µL of sample, Big Kahunas automated plate-based buffer exchange system will create more protein formulations, while work on other things.
Stress Your Proteins
You can run your proteins through the whole gamut of tests with Big Kahuna including: agitation; freeze/thaw; and heating. You can even shake and spin your formulation to see if they aggregate.
Big Kahuna also gives you the ability to see how your formulations behave in various climates by increasing the temperature. With the optional incubator and scheduler you can also run automated, accelerated and long-term stability studies.
On Deck Analysis
Big Kahuna allows you to carry out protein formulation analysis on the same platform. Using freeslate you can check pH, viscosity, turbidity and count large visual particles.
Other analytical techniques can be added using 3rd party add-ons such as UV/Vis or DLS. Similarly you can use Big Kahuna to prepare samples for off-deck HPLC or CE analysis.
LEA Integration
By integrating LEA you can streamline your workflow and remove bottlenecks increasing your efficiency. LEA allows you to link experimental conditions and steps to analytical data, bringing all your data together into one place making it easier to generate conclusive reports .
Small Molecule Preformulation
The very nature of Big Kahunas versatile platform allows you to characterise every single physicochemical property of your drug candidate. The highly configurable platform and automated functionality are suited to the most complex molecules and allows you to analyse more structures and conditions more quickly. This in turn enables you to decide more quickly which formulations are worth pursuing and how to get the best formulation of your API.
With Big Kahuna you can carry out:
- Solubility screening
- Polymorph screening
- Powder dispensing
- Reaction screening
Accelerated Workflow
With Big Kahuna you can simultaneously run hundreds of experiments in parallel using significantly less material. This enables you to perform more detailed analysis of your preformulation.
All you need to do is, pick your variables and map out your workflow, Big Kahuna does the rest for you. Completing the workflow in one instrument allows you to get a better picture of how your system works and behaves which can reveal clues as to how to optimise variables and conditions.
Crystallography
Big Kahunas crystallisation assembly can save you a heap of time. Its 8×12 array can be heated or cooled on the system deck.
The universal substrate allows you to analyse your crystals using birefringence, XRD and Raman spectroscopy, all without damaging a single crystal.
Temperature-Controlled Pipetting
Big Kahuna features temperature controlled pipetting and filtering. Using a heated dispensing element with septum piercing tips for sealed vials and a heated filter block Big Kahuna helps get your APIs into solution and prevents them from precipitating.
The filter block contains 96 separate sample wells which eliminates the chances of cross-contamination.
Positive Displacement Pipetting and Solid Dispensing
Big Kahuna has been designed to cater for the most viscous liquids and solids with high precision knowing that the accuracy of your formulations is critical.
Using positive displacement pipetting, Big Kahuna is able to deal with most viscous and sticky liquids, even at very low volumes.
Big Kahuna deals with solids using an adaptive learning algorithm to accurately weigh and dispense powders.
It also remembers optimal settings to help you generate formulations more quickly and reproducibly.
LEA Integration
By integrating LEA, bottlenecks in your production workflow are eliminated. It allows you to design an intuitive experimental design at the front end and to marry this up with an analytical backend.
LEA is an easy-to-use software package that enables you to associate conditions, steps and experimental data. This allows you to produce more comprehensive reports and link to processing condition and steps.
Process Chemistry
The configuration versatility of the Big Kahuna platform make it perfect for adapting to your reaction screening and catalyst optimisation workflows. Big Kahuna employs an array-based, micro-scale take on processing, sampling and analytical work. This optimises your conditions in minimal time, allowing you to test and screen more variables than ever before. You will also know exactly what your chemistrys up to at every step.
Key Features
- Process optimisation
- Screen continuous variables
- Screen discrete variables
- Optimise and screen new synthetic routes
- Improve yields and impurity profiles
- Optimise catalyst loading
- Map process robustness
Rapidly Fine Tune Your Process
With Big Kahuna you will gain a new level of understanding about your process and the effects of incremental changes. Big Kahuna allows you to take samples and make additions to your reactions in real time.
Big Kahuna gives you the freedom to screen discrete variables like catalyst precursors and ligands as well as continuous variables like temperature, pressure and time. In addition, you can use Big Kahuna to:
- Identify key process variables
- Map reaction profiles
- Identify high yield and selectivity conditions
- Optimise synthesis routes
Understand the Real-Time Kinetics of Your Reaction
Trying to optimise a single variable at a time is laborious and may not provide a real picture of what is happening in the actual system. By adding the Optimisation Sample Reactor (OSR), you can quickly learn about and understand the real-time kinetics of your reaction.
OSR collects time-point samples from as many as 8 pressure and temperature controlled vessels at once, without interrupting the reactions. The system ensures that the heating, cooling and stirring of each reaction is kept just right.
The Complete Solution
Big Kahuna is a comprehensive, all-in-one solution. It handles the screening of all of your substrates, catalysts, reactants, solvents and reaction conditions allowing you to investigate a vast array of organic transformations. Precision dosing, using minimal quantities of solids, liquids, slurries and viscous reagents ensures your expensive materials are used as efficiently as possible. Big Kahuna also maintains tight control of stirrer plate temperatures, filtrations and dilution. All this means you can have samples prepared for structural analysis when you need them.
High Temperature and Pressure Reactor
Unchained Labs Screening Pressure Reactor (SPR) allows you to study the effects of high temperature and pressure. With the SPR you can run up to 96 experiments in parallel automatically up to 400°C and 200 bar. Using the SPR you can potentially push your chemistry where you need it to go.
LEA Integration
By implementing LEA you can streamline your workflow and effectively eliminate bottlenecks. You can use it to link experimental design with analytical tools for maximum efficiency.
LEA also integrates all the experimental conditions, stages and analytical data from your workflow so you can generate comprehensive reports and the most informed decisions possible.
