Dear Customer,   

For many biotech teams, automation has always felt like something only the big players could afford to tackle. But here’s the shift we’re seeing: smaller biotech groups are starting to adopt flexible, compact automation that doesn’t require in-house robotics experts. It’s leveling the playing field — letting lean teams run high-throughput workflows and still stay nimble.

So the real challenge isn’t if automation makes sense — it’s how to adopt it without adding cost, complexity, or headcount. That’s where a new generation of compact platforms comes in:

• Simplicity from Day One – intuitive interfaces and pre-built workflows mean critical tasks can be automated immediately, without lengthy training or dedicated automation teams.

• Maximize ROI – by reducing hands-on time and consumable costs, these systems accelerate research while keeping overheads low.

• Expert Support Included – application scientists ensure workflows are optimized from installation, so productivity gains aren’t offset by managing complex robotics.

To see what this looks like in practice, see how biotech teams such as Camena Bioscience have adopted SPT Labtech’s firefly^® to unlock new possibilities.

See how simple automation can be!

In this quick demo, Paul Lomax, our Head of Genomics, shows just how fast a biotech researcher can go from setup to execution using firefly — proving that automation doesn’t need to be complicated to be powerful.

firefly application note Illumina DNA Prep

The Illumina DNA Prep kit is an optimized, user-friendly workflow for preparing normalized and ready-to-sequence libraries in under four hours, from a wide range of DNA inputs. Illumina DNA Prep delivers reliable results - consistent insert sizes, uniform coverage, and optimized performance for a range of sample types and DNA input amount.

Check out our recent application note demonstrating that high quality libraries, with consistent library concentration and fragment size, can be prepared on firefly^® using the Illumina DNA Prep kit.

Automating the NEBNext^® Ultra™ II FS DNA Library Prep Kit for Illumina on firefly

Here we present that high quality libraries can be prepared using firefly and the
NEBNext Ultra II FS DNA Kit for Illumina. Libraries prepared using firefly are consistent in both their concentration and fragment size across a 96-well plate, and the sequencing performance of these libraries is comparable to manually prepared libraries.