See II.2.4

VIB wishes to purchase and commission an automated platform (robotics) for the analysis of metabolites, proteins and lipids linked to a high-throughput mass spectrometer.

The platform will be used to process large cohorts of samples. The selected platform must therefore automate the manual procedures of our laboratory in order to offer better quality in technical variations to our users. These procedures are summarised below:

transfer: since samples are currently offered in eppendorf tubes, they often need to be transferred to LC (Liquid Chromatography)-compatible formats (96well, 384 well, ...).

-steel preparation: samples are prepared by precipitation and centrifugation after incubation. The supernatant is transferred to an LC-compatible format.

-Derivatization is another typical workflow within the lab, where some reagents are added to the steel, followed by heating and shaking. Centrifugation and aliquoting is the final step for such procedures.

-Solid Phase Extraction (SPE): as this is one of the easiest ways to speed up and facilitate sample preparation for mass spectrometry, this is an essential requirement for the platform

-The laboratory also performs a lot of cellular work, not typical LC-MS preparation, but crucial for maintaining cell lines for other supporting workflows.

-Once the intended "Echo-MS" platform is available (period May-June 2023), the platform can also fully automate sampling for the compatible mass spectrometer. The automation platform must also be compatible with the Echo-MS so that the samples can be analyzed immediately without user intervention.