Provision of single cell western blot equipment

Tender description

Public Health England (PHE) awarded a contract for provision of single cell western blot equipment to Bio-Techne Ltd. The equipment will be used PHE Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards (CRCE) in Chilton to research the processes underpinning radiation-induced cardiovascular disease. The current "safe-level" of exposure to radiation that is permissible, is based solely on radiation doses that can cause cancers. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that cancer may not be the only disease that can be induced by radiation. Cardiovascular disease is at the top of the list of potential non-cancer ailments that can be instigated by radiation. The single cell western blot equipment must meet the following mandatory requirements: - The system must be capable of microscale separations, quantitation, and immunodetection of proteins in single-cells and must be able to analyse around 1000 single cells per run. - The system must be compatible with conventional western primary antibodies and standard fluorescently tagged secondary antibodies for immune-probing. - The instrument must have capability of multiplexing at least 2 target proteins per run and must offer possibility of stripping and reprobing with different set of antibodies. - The analysis software must perform automatic detection of lanes and protein peaks and offer automatic peak quantification. Desirable requirement: - Bench-top footprint would be advantage The contract can be extended twice by 12 months each.