Company Profile

Aurora Biomed provides enabling technologies, liquid handling systems, assay services, and reagents for life sciences, drug discovery research, analytical chemistry, drug safety screening, and laboratory automation. We are headquartered in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and have global sales, support, and service offices.

Liquid Handling Systems

Aurora Biomed is dedicated to providing automated liquid handling systems for scientists in a variety of research fields, including: pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, agriculture, food science, and forensics. Our VERSA Series of liquid-handling systems enables greater efficiency and higher data quality, decreases variability from repetitive bench work, and reduces reagent costs.

The VERSA Series is a group of highly customizable, integratable, and scaleable liquid handling systems for automating many laboratory processes. The VERSA Series includes the VERSA 100, VERSA 1000, VERSA 2000 and VERSA 3000 workstations and can automate multiple genomic, proteomic, drug discovery, and analytical applications. These instruments can be customized to perform diverse functions including efficient parallel dilution, IC50 and assay preparation, plate reformatting, and hit picking. The customizability, adaptability and simplicity of use of the VERSA series make it an excellent choice for varied liquid handling applications. In addition to these customizable instruments, the VERSA Series also contains a number of dedicated systems, including: VERSA Mini PCR Setup Workstation, VERSA Mini Carousel PCR Setup Workstation, VERSA Mini NAP/PCR Setup Workstation, VERSA Mini Liquid-liquid Extraction Workstation, VERSA Arrayer 100 and VERSA Gene.

Ion Channel Research

Aurora Biomed focuses on high-throughput ion channel drug discovery as to address the recent shift of resources in the pharmaceutical industry towards addressing drug safety issues earlier in the discovery process. This shift was compelled by the issue of drug-induced QT-prolongation and cardiac arrhythmias and the emergence of the S7B, E14 guidance documents for drug safety assessment. High-throughput screening (HTS) of test compounds early in the discovery process decreases the cost of drug discovery as compounds with potential to cause QT-prolongation are removed before substantial development has taken place.

Aurora Biomed’s family of Ion Channel Screening products include the atomic absorption spectroscopy-based Ion Channel Readers (ICR8000, ICR12000) and ion channel cell line licensing. Applications of the ICR 8000 and ICR 12000 include voltage-gated potassium channels (hERG, Kv1.1, Kv1.4, Kv1.5, SKCa, BKCa), stretch-activated potassium channels, voltage-gated sodium channels (Nav1.5, Nav1.2), voltage-gated calcium channels, voltage-gated chloride channels and tranporters (Na/K-ATPase, K-Cl Co-Transporter).

Analytical Chemistry

We are dedicated to the design of analytical instruments to provide smart laboratory solutions. We specialize in elemental analysis equipment including Atomic Absorption Spectrometers (AAS), Atomic Fluorescence Spectrometers (AFS), UV & Visible Spectrophotometers and a variety of standard & customized OEM products. We also offer Microwave Digestion Systems for sample preparation.

Contract Research Services

In order to provide solutions for companies in different stages of development, Aurora Biomed offers a variety of contract research services, including: cardiac safety screening, in vivo QT prolongation studies, screening of a wide variety of ion channel targets, ion channel profiling, validation of cell lines, and assay development.